


Auradron Prep Presents "Into the Woods"

by AmityRavenclawElf



Series: Auradon Drama Club [1]
Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Magical Characters are Magical, Multi, No Bashing, drama club
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-01-10 20:20:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18415142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmityRavenclawElf/pseuds/AmityRavenclawElf
Summary: Most of the Isle kids wouldn't admit that they really wanted to be in the school play. If asked, Mal and Uma would say that they were only there for the required extracurricular credit, and Harry would say that he wouldn't be caught dead gracing Bore-adon with his performance skills were it not for the fact that Uma was involved too, and even Jay, who wouldn't even be onstage (he was on lights and sound), would give some vague excuse about sticking with the others. Nevertheless, it wasn't hard to divine that they were excited for the auditions and more than ready to participate in Auradon Prep's performance of "Into the Woods".





	1. Auditions

None of the Isle kids would admit that they actually wanted to be in the play, except for Evie and Dizzy and Gil; if asked, Mal and Uma would say that they were only there for the required extracurricular credit, and Harry would say that he wouldn't be caught dead gracing Bore-adon with his performance skills were it not for the fact that Uma was involved too, and even Jay, who wouldn't even be onstage (he was on lights and sound), would give some vague excuse about sticking with the others.

"It's an Isle thing," Carlos explained to Ben while familiarizing himself with the ropes backstage. "If you let people know you enjoy something, then they might want to take it from you."

Ben kept that in mind when he saw Uma reveling in the auditorium's acoustics under the guise of "testing" the sound (She made her voice fill the whole space, and Mal rolled her eyes at the unnecessary loudness.), or Jay cackling up in the sound booth as he played around with the lights (sometimes making the spotlight follow people for no reason, sometimes changing the color of the stage lights over and over, but always looking somehow more like a kid in a candy shop than he did around actual candy), or Harry and Dizzy picking the lock to the prop room so they could go nuts with the hats and masks and plastic weapons.

"Wow. A plastic sword," Mal drawled. "That's not redundant." Then Uma pretended to shoot her with a plastic gun, which led to a pretend battle with very real minor injuries (but no broken bones or bloodshed, to which Gil said, "That's what makes it a _pretend_ battle.") and them getting kicked out of the prop room.

Their exuberance seemed to make Jane more nervous; she could frequently be heard babbling, "I mean, yeah, I'm auditioning, but I almost always end up in the background or doing hair and makeup; I'm just sort of here for fun, you know...". 

Chad was scandalized by most of the VKs even being there ("Is nothing sacred?"), but he still easily complied when Dizzy asked him to waltz around the stage with her; he had been teaching her how to waltz just yesterday.

Audrey tried to seem disapproving of everyone's antics for maybe the first couple of minutes, but she was soon caught up in the thrill of having other people enjoy theatre as much as she did; she harmonized with Uma and borrowed one of Dizzy's four- now three -boas and, by the time auditions were about to start, was sitting with Evie on the old couch that had been a set-piece for one of last year's plays, both of them red-faced with laughter and draped in different-colored boas.

Fairy Godmother was there for the auditions, even though Miss La Bouff was the head of the Drama Department. She didn't _say_ that it was to make sure none of the VKs pulled any shenanigans, but she kind of didn't have to.

"Alright, settle down!" Miss La Bouff called out, her Orleans accent thick as ever. She squeaked excitedly. "What a great turnout! I see old faces, I see new faces..." She clapped her hands.

"Are we auditioning for parts, or is this a _general_ audition and _you_ choose our parts?" Chad asked. The presence of the male VKs had emboldened him; normally, he made a show of being dragged into the auditorium by Audrey and using the wrong terms for things.

"General. All y'all are gonna perform a monologue and sing part of a song- whatever song you want -and I'll give you a part based on your unique strengths."

"Can we have props?" Audrey asked.

"Sure."

"Can people be our props?" Uma asked, mostly for future reference, since she already had a plan for _this_ audition.

Miss La Bouff chuckled. "Oh yeah."

" _If_ you have their permission!" Fairy Godmother hastily qualified.

"You have my permission," Harry said.

"My advice to all of you," Miss La Bouff said, "is to try to show us a side of you we haven't seen. Let us see your range. Acting is an exercise in vulnerability."

"I'll pass on that," Mal said under her breath, so that only Ben and Evie could hear her.

"Then you'll be cast as the Witch," Evie said breezily.

"Well, seeing as there isn't a role for a _fairy_..."

Miss La Bouff cleared her throat. "Now, if I could have everyone head into the audience seats so we can start the auditions with Audrey."

Audrey flounced up from the old couch and strode over to the middle of the stage whilst everyone else was taking their seats. Her audition was simple; she knew every song in _Into the Woods_ , and she knew what role she wanted: Cinderella. So she sang "On the Steps of the Palace", and she took Miss La Bouff's suggestion into account; rather than singing the whole thing as prettily as she sang everything, she leaned into the frustration at some parts, nearly growling on the lines "He spread pitch on the stairs" and "still standing stuck in the stuff on the steps". She was comical in her fake agitation- she could be comical! She smacked herself in the forehead, changed moods on a dime. By the time the song ended and she was reading the generic monologue, her spirits were as high as the notes she had just hit.

Ben was up next, and he gave the most inoffensive rendition of "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" that anyone had ever heard. He did his awkward dancing and gestures. His goodnaturedness barely lessened in the monologue; it seemed he wasn't terribly invested in having range. Then again, he had joined the Drama Club because Audrey had begged him to, last year, and he was probably here for Mal this year. It was unclear whether he actually had a passion for theatre, so much as a casual enjoyment.

Chad was up next ("Grease Lightning", as always), then Dizzy, who had been coached by both Evie and Chad to sing "Tomorrow" from _Annie_ , which went too well with her cheery cuteness to be remotely fair. 

When Evie was called up, she dragged Mal with her, as a prop. Mal stood with her arms crossed as Evie slinked around her, singing "Charming" from _Great Comet_ and intermittently caressing and spinning her, seeming to legitimately relish in the lyrics ("Oh, you beautiful thing."). She actually got Mal to blush (with a slight grudging smile and dagger-eyes clearly conveying "I'm going to kill you, Grimhilde!") by the time the first chorus came around; triumphantly, she sang out, "Oh how she blushes, how she blushes, my pretty!" and Jay turned the lights pink. Before the last chorus, she wrapped an arm around Mal from behind and with the other arm pointed into the audience, at Ben. "He is quite madly in love with you, my dear." The song ended with a final "Charmante, charming," and Evie bumped Mal's hip with her own and then kissed her on the cheek before the blushing fairy could stomp off in unconvincing indignation. ("Get a room," Uma snarked when Mal sat down, and Mal flashed a bright green glare her way.) Then Evie did her monologue, and it was starkly opposite to her song; she delivered it somberly, even crying actual tears, to the point that the piece somehow came to mean something brand new. The Isle kids tensed uncomfortably at her pretend-weakness, but then she smiled brightly at the end, as if the tears had never happened.

Gil was up next, and he sang a song from the Isle, to which he forgot the words halfway through and stood silently thinking about it for a few seconds before finishing it correctly with a bright smile. (Chad sighed audibly.) The monologue was a bit of a struggle, seeing as he was not good at reading, but one skill the Isle _had_ taught him was how to bluff, so he blazed confidently through the words he did not know, recognize, or understand.

Harry surprised everyone by belting out some sort of comedic love ballad, after which he got a solid two seconds of silence before Jay shouted from the sound booth, "No offense, but I was _positive_ you were going to sing a sea shanty, dude." Then everyone burst into murmurs of agreement. Uma smirked privately, recognizing the song; it always played at the beginning one of Ursula's favorite soap operas. It was the song that always signaled to them that they had a solid hour (minimum) free before Ursula gave a crap where Uma was. When Harry sat down after delivering his monologue (with the melodrama of someone used to performing on a ship and the suggestiveness at someone impossibly adept at turning everything into an innuendo; Fairy Godmother had her mouth hanging open as if she was trying to think of a way to reprimand him), she was still smirking; he grinned in response.

Jane shuffled onto the stage, tossed her hair, and inhaled. Glanced at her mother. Exhaled. Shook her head agitatedly, then sang a very in-character "I Know Things Now". The stiffness of her movements as she sang, "Mother said 'Straight ahead', not to delay or be misled..." was utterly perfect, as was the way her tone went wistful on "But he seemed so nice...". Everyone assumed it was Jay dimming the lights when she sang "Down a dark, slimy path where lie secrets that I never want to know," but Jay had not touched a thing. ( _Bibbidi boppity boo indeed,_ Jay thought appreciatively.) Audrey, who had seen enough of Jane's past auditions to know what a victory it was that she hadn't kept her eyes trained on her shoes the whole time, clapped the loudest. And if she was a bit too fast on the monologue, well that could be worked on. The point was, she was really growing into her stage presence.

Mal sang a tongue-in-cheek cover of "I Put a Spell On You", which Evie thought was a little on the nose and Chad thought seemed horribly smug, all things considered, but no one could say that she sang it _poorly_. Quite the opposite; she was, for lack of a better word, enchanting. Her voice was strong in the lows _and_ the highs, and she went full-on fae with the song, to the point that a few of the audience members could've sworn they could smell pine trees and damp earth, could feel themselves being pulled towards something. At a point, Ben found himself unable to breathe, and Evie looked glassy-eyed. Mal's delivery wasn't terribly imaginative, but it almost didn't have to be; it was good. Then she gave her monologue, starting in an unsettling monotone and building to something like a commanding roar (although the latter came out somewhat petulant-sounding, to some of them).

Uma was the very last, and she, like Mal, had little interest in the "exercise in vulnerability" concept. She also, like most of the Isle kids, didn't know many musicals yet. Still, one song that she had found in her preparation for this audition-that-she-wouldn't-admit-she-cared-about stood out as personally resonant without requiring her to get all mushy-poignant in front of all these people. So she sang "Santa Fe" from _Newsies_. Fairy Godmother let out a little gasp before she was even done with the first verse, either because she said the d-word or because she did it while violently throwing a prop across the stage. It was a rageful song. When it was soft, she was seething beautifully, and she even allowed some despair to slip in (as long as she wasn't pulling an Evie); when it was loud, she was some sort of avenging siren, and Dizzy whispered "Whoa", and Harry stared transfixed, and Mal and Jane both winced and subtly covered their ears. A few people sank in their seats as she sang, "Why should you spend your whole life living trapped where there ain't no future even at seventeen?!" (And did she spit out the word "seventeen" to make Ben's song suddenly seem ironic?) More people sank down as she sang, "I need space! And fresh air! Let 'em laugh in my face; I don't care!" Fairy Godmother was curled in on herself; Miss La Bouff was delighted and made a mental note to consider cross-casting Enjolras if they ever did Les Miserables. By all rights, Uma should have been hoarse for her monologue, but she was not.

"Alright! Woohoo!" Miss La Bouff clapped as she stood up from her chair. "Alright! Everyone, give yourselves a round of applause!"

They applauded. Harry hopped up to help Uma down from the stage, beating Gil there by half a second. The rest of them went to hover around their director in a loose ring.

"Roles will be posted tomorrow on the auditorium door."

"Have you chosen them yet?" Evie asked, in that tone that everyone from the Isle recognized as one she used to used to sweet-talk people into compromising situations. (Except the "compromising situation" here was just telling them their roles slightly early.)

"That's for me to know," Miss La Bouff said.

"I'm going to die of anticipation," Audrey said, bouncing giddily on her toes and grabbing the nearest person, Jane, around the shoulders.

"If Chad isn't Little Red Riding Hood, I'm gonna riot," Uma said.

"Oh, sure. And I'll betcha you're gonna be _both_ the Evil Stepsisters," Chad retorted.

"Hey, my mom's an evil stepsister," Dizzy said mildly. "And she'll be really, really pissed if she finds out that the musical got her name wrong."

"Dizzy, language," Fairy Godmother chastened.

Dizzy's face scrunched up in confusion. "Which part was bad language?"

"I'm gonna climb stuff now," Gil announced.

Uma shrugged, which he took as permission; he ran off before either of the adults could register what he'd said. The next thing they heard was Carlos, backstage, shouting, "No-no-no-no, Gil, those ropes are for the curtains!" and then the sound of something falling.

Miss La Bouff looked concerned, but Uma just held up her hand for calm and nodded for Harry to go deal with it, which he did.

Fairy Godmother deemed this an appropriate time to excuse herself, saying good evening to all of them before departing.

"Well, I think the most important thing is that we all had fun," Ben said, in his most diplomatic voice. "This is going to be-"

"Babe." Mal shook her head. "You really don't have to do your king thing. It's a school play."

"Right. That's fair." Ben smiled a bit sappily. (Uma and Audrey exchanged a look.) "Um...anyone want to catch the last fifteen minutes of dinner?"

"Now you're talking!" exclaimed Jay, who seemed to have materialized right behind Chad, causing him to squeak, startled.

"We'll catch up in about five minutes," Mal said, hooking elbows with Evie.

"Seven minutes," Evie amended.

"Well, I'll save your seats," Ben said knowingly.

"Also, I propose we binge watch some musicals in my room," Audrey said importantly. "To get some of you caught up on musical theatre."

"That sounds like a great idea," Miss La Bouff answered for them. "Group bonding makes for a great cast."

"I can pop some popcorn," Jane suggested.

"I can harvest some herbs and spices," Mal drawled, using the established euphemism for magic weed.

"I can pretend I don't know what that means and leave with plausible deniability!" Miss La Bouff pumped her fist and left the auditorium right before another loud noise could be heard from backstage.

"Gil!" Uma barked. "Harry!"

Both of them speed-walked from the wings, Harry tossing out a "Blame Carlos."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just testing this concept out because it seems fun. It occurs to me that I've never written the Descendants characters in their actual canonical universe before; it feels weird. Also the tone of this one is so far lighter than my other ones, so I'm a teeny bit insecure about this one. (Can I write without angst?? We shall see.)
> 
> Please comment!


	2. After Auditions & Getting the Cast List

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So let's just assume that in Auradon it's super easy to just, like...watch stage musicals on a screen. All of them, totally available, professionally filmed. So there might be a couple of chapters, in the future, of them watching plays that definitely aren't available in non-bootleg form IRL. Just roll with it. Unless you definitely never want to read them riffing musicals ever again, in which case let me know. XD
> 
> I hope the dialogue is coherent.

Audrey's room rang with laughter and conversation.

Uma, Harry, and Gil had congregated by the headboard on one of the two beds, positioning the pillows around their group strategically (although it couldn't really be said why they deemed such defensive measures necessary, in a casual gathering with friends and acquaintances and Chad; they certainly didn't explain themselves). They were sharing handfuls of popcorn and candy amongst themselves, having grabbed some early so that none of them had to return to the snack bowls. Jane and Audrey sat at the foot of that same bed, babbling about which show they should watch first while Audrey held the remote aloft like a judge ready to bring down the gavel.

The Core Four had taken the other bed, Ben not joining them because he had gone straight to his office to do king stuff after dinner. Carlos was finishing up homework from one of his gifted classes, and Evie was checking his chemistry work for him while Mal and Jay shared magic weed. Chad sat at the desk, grudgingly allowing Dizzy to paint his nails.

"No one will be able to tell, right?" Chad stressed.

"It's the same color as your skin," Dizzy assured him. "I'm not even using any glitter or rhinestones, even though they'd look great on you." She paused. "Can I use rhinestones when I do your toes? You always wear socks anyway."

"We never even said you were going to do my toes," Chad protested.

"Please?"

"Don't do that."

" _Please_ , step-cousin who I love?"

"That is not fair."

"Okay!" Audrey announced shrilly. "We're starting with _Into the Woods_ itself, since some of you haven't seen it. We'll try to get through three or four musicals tonight and save the rest for future gatherings."

"Let's keep it at three," Carlos suggested. "They're, like, two hours each."

"Two hours each?" Harry repeated. "Put together, isn't that around seven hours?"

"Six," Uma said. "But it would be seven if you averaged the six hours of three shows with the eight hours of four shows." Appreciatively, she added, "You've gotten better." And she stroked his hair, causing him to grin and melt into their pillow barricade.

"Get a room," Mal called out, as retribution for earlier.

"Sure, Miss Fifteen Minutes," Uma retaliated, referencing how much Mal and Evie had overshot the promised "seven minutes" of alone time before rejoining the others.

"No regrets," Evie said, without looking up from Carlos's chemistry worksheet.

"Boy, I'm glad I'm single," Jay sighed, puffing red smoke out of his mouth.

"It's cute that you pretend you're single," Uma said.

"What does that mean?" Carlos asked, with disproportionate alarm, and at the same time Jay protested, "I _am_ single."

"Wait, who is Jay dating?" Gil asked.

"No one!"

"I'll tell you later."

"I'm pressing play, now," Audrey said. And she did.

"So these are all the characters?" Mal said, eyeing the opening shot of the Baker and his wife, Cinderella, and Jack with his cow.

"Most of the main ones," Jane answered earnestly.

"I want to be her," Audrey sighed as soon as Cinderella opened her mouth.

When Cinderella's father stumbled drunkenly onstage, Mal snorted, "That's gotta be Harry."

The first song continued, and Gil went cross-eyed trying to keep track of all the characters and their overlapping lines and unrelated problems. It was bad enough that they mixed real people like Cinderella with story characters like Little Red Riding Hood, but they also seemed to get tiny things wrong in every story. "They're singing so fast," he complained.

They got to the scene where Cinderella gets her dress from her mother's ghost in the tree, and Jay chuckled. "Snap, Fairy Godmother just got edited out of history."

"It's a darker take on the stories," Jane said. "I guess a fairy godmother is too light."

"Bibbidi boppity bye, Headmistress," Mal said.

When the Wolf entered the stage in his suggestive costume, all of the Isle kids squinted in disbelief.

"Frigging excuse me?" Carlos said.

"Land of goodness indeed," Jay said, and Carlos lightly shoved him.

"I'll just..." Chad covered Dizzy's eyes. (She huffed; she hadn't even been watching the screen.)

"They'll definitely censor that," said Audrey almost clinically. "The school never lets us have any fun. How many years have I lobbied for Sweeney Todd? But no, that's 'inappropriate'."

"Sweeney Todd better be next on the list, then," Jay said.

They got to the scene where the Baker rips the cloak off of Little Red.

"Oh, I forgot she kicks him," Jane said. "That's gotta hurt."

"Light punishment," Uma opined. "I've killed men over that sort of thing."

"Wait, what?" Audrey said, swiveling around. "Really?"

"Well, not really," Uma qualified. "I just wounded them, but they died of infection; the Isle is really dirty."

"You're...You're joking, right?" Jane said.

Uma glanced, puzzled, over at the Core Four, and seeing their tight expressions, she flatly said, "Yeah. I'm messing with you. No one in this room has a body count. At all." She rolled her eyes when Evie, of all people, gave her a thumbs up. They weren't _serial killers_ , but the Isle was a dangerous place, and even when it came down to pure self defense, it was easier (even by accident) to injure someone badly enough that they died of exposure than it was to injure them in a way that would heal up fine with spit and a rag. Especially if, as was true for most of them, one was small enough or scrawny enough to have to fight dirty. (She happened to know that Carlos had dropped a bunch of bricks on at least one person's head; that person had not bounced back.) "Just a room full of people who have never killed anyone, for any reason."

Audrey and Jane let out uneasy giggles, and Chad kept a suspicious look leveled on her while he blew his fingernails dry.

"...except Harry," Uma tacked on, just to see the looks on their faces, and because she knew Harry would appreciate her cultivating his aura of danger.

"She's kidding," Jane said, clearly trying to sound convinced.

"Oh look, the Baker's Wife is back," Jay said.

Focus returned to the show.

A couple of minutes later, Carlos deadpanned, "He traded a cow for beans."

"Magic beans," Mal qualified, and Carlos looked at her with incredulity:

"The cow itself is several hamburgers!"

"He's not going to eat his friend," Jane said.

"He can get new friends."

"Crap, Carlos is gonna eat us all," Jay said.

"Carlos is officially Pro-Eating Friends," Mal said.

(Harry cleared his throat pointedly.)

"I guess Sweeney Todd _is_ next," Audrey said to herself.

"Also, the Baker's Wife is not pretending to have moral hangups about this, and I respect that," Uma said. "Homegirl deserves a real name."

"For not having morals?" Chad said scornfully.

"For not _pretending_ to have morals."

When it got to Jane's audition song, which Little Red sang after emerging from the Wolf, Jane immediately started rambling, "I just know I tanked that. Dizzy will definitely be Little Red, and I'll be on makeup and wardrobe again this year..."

"Oh, shut up; you did amazing," Mal said.

"You made the lights dim," Jay added brightly.

" _You_ did that," Jane sighed.

"No, really; that was you."

Jane frowned perplexedly, but all she said was, "I...Stop tricking me."

Jay shrugged and sucked candy off of his fingers.

"Your right foot is done," Dizzy informed Chad. "Give me your left foot?"

When the Witch raged at Rapunzel, several of the Isle kids went very still and quiet. Mal slipped her hand into Evie's, Carlos froze with his eyes on the screen and a handful of sweets halfway to his mouth, and Uma crossed her arms as defiantly as though Ursula was in the room with her and she had to pretend to be unbothered. When the Witch's voice went soft and imploring, Dizzy stopped applying rhinestones to Chad's toes and looked up at the screen almost wistfully. When the Witch cut Rapunzel's hair, Evie gasped audibly, her hand flying to her own hair in horror.

It was Gil who observed, "But wait, does that mean the hair can't work as an ingredient anymore? Because the Witch touched it?" No one answered him. And as someone who wasn't always great at reading the room, of course he tried again: "Isn't that how it works?"

Uma nodded.

The mood did not recover until Little Red threatened Jack with a knife, at which point some of them nodded approvingly and Evie managed a smile and said, "She's learning."

Audrey sang along with _her_ audition song.

The characters fed the cow the potion ingredients, and Carlos protested, "The hair from the corn itself worked?"

"Magical spells," Mal said with a shrug. "When they're specific, you gotta get 'em just right. When they're vague, exploit that loophole."

The Evil Stepmother cut off Florinda's toe, and Evie murmured, "Don't give my mom any ideas."

"Or mine," Uma and Mal said in unison, and they decidedly did not acknowledge each other.

When the Witch tried to use her powers to steal Rapunzel back and found that she had lost the magic, Mal remembered seeing her mother reduced to a tiny lizard, and Uma remembered the few occasions when her mother had been hazy enough to miss when she tried to swipe at Uma with her tentacles, and both of them smiled with cool satisfaction.

By the end of Act One, Gil was asleep.

"That was just the first half?" Jay said. "Seemed like a whole story."

"If the second half is just heroes reveling in their victory, I'm gonna throw up," Uma said.

Then Act Two started, and all of the characters were saying _'I wish'_ again.

"You're kidding me," Uma said.

"These bampots are _still_ wishing for stuff?" Harry said. 

"Well, they can't be happy for the rest of their lives," Audrey said reasonably. "There are always _some_ problems."

Mal just quietly fidgeted at the sight of Cinderella sitting boredly in a throne she clearly didn't particularly want, surrounded by suck-up versions of her past tormentors. She loved Ben (And boy was that a bit too easy to admit to herself.), but the throne was another monster entirely. She was trying to teach herself to stop being selfish, to stop trying to control everything and love on only her own terms, but royalty was a ridiculous thing to have to factor in. It wouldn't exactly be selfless to take a crown she knew she didn't deserve, but neither would it be selfless to make her reluctance Ben's problem. And she certainly wasn't going to run away again; she had learned that much. Communication was important.

As the story continued and it became clear that a Giantess was on the loose, Carlos groaned, "That idiot with his stupid magic beans..."

"Actually, it's Cinderella's fault," Jay pointed out. "She dropped the last bean; they cut down the other stalk."

"But Jack's the one who pissed the Giants off."

"True." Jay wiped a bit of chocolate off of Carlos's face with his own thumb, from which he then licked it. Carlos stared, his eyes wide, and then resumed watching the show.

The Baker's Wife had an affair with Cinderella's Prince, and Chad said, "You know, in hindsight, it's kinda weird to be in a play where my dad cheats on my mom."

"At least your mom doesn't lose half her foot and get blinded by birds," Dizzy yawned.

"I hope Rapunzel hasn't seen this play," Jane said. "She gets properly butchered."

The song "Your Fault" had all the characters bickering, and Uma chuckled. "Who does that remind you of?" she murmured to Harry.

Harry smiled wearily; at this point he was quite tired, but he still had to acknowledge that what they were watching was clearly a musical version of how the crew acted some days. The way Little Red was going around saying _'It was your fault!'_ at everyone could have been Desiree, easily.

The Witch sang her piece, next, taking every other character to task, and Uma almost clapped when she said _'I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right.'_ It was ridiculous how mixed her feelings about this Witch were; she held the short-sighted heroes accountable, and yet with her "daughter", Rapunzel, she was so...familiar.

The Baker ran off, sang a song about how he was becoming his father, and came back. The song probably would have affected more people, but they were dozing hard.

Harry fell asleep during "No One is Alone".

By the time the play ended, Dizzy, Jay, and Carlos had also fallen asleep, and Mal was close to it but still just awake enough to protest when someone accused her of being asleep.

"Guess we'll do Sweeney Todd some other time," Uma said, shaking both of her boys awake. Something inside of her felt sort of achingly hollow after hearing the song "Children Will Listen".

"Not everyone is ready for long term commitment," Audrey sighed. "It was only a couple of hours."

"Maybe we should do it on a weekend next time," Mal said groggily.

"Goodnight," Jay said, carrying Carlos (and a bowl on candy) out.

"I'll take Dizzy, Chad," Evie said.

The room emptied out.

...

**Into the Woods Cast List:**

("Out of my way, Doug!")

 **Baker** \- Ben  
**Baker’s Wife** \- Jane  
**Witch** \- Uma  
**Cinderella** \- Audrey  
**Little Red** \- Dizzy  
**Jack** \- Gil  
**Cinderella’s Prince/Wolf** \- Harry  
**Rapunzel’s Prince** \- Chad  
**Rapunzel/Florinda** \- Mal  
**Cinderella's Stepmother/Red's Grandmother/Giantess** \- Evie  
**Lucinda** \- [ _some random other name from the school, who cares_ ]  
*****NEEDED: One male actor in the joint-role of the Narrator and the Mysterious Man!*****

"I'm what?" Jane gasped.

"Haha. Joint roll," Jay said, pointing.

"Well, well, look who's playing the witch," Chad drawled.

"I'm literally a sea witch, Chad; it's not an insult," Uma said while Harry drifted into Chad's personal space, for intimidation.

"Which one was Jack again?" Gil asked.

"The dumb one," Mal said, quietly because she didn't actually dislike Gil; meanness was just a difficult-to-suppress reflex sometimes.

"The one who climbed the beanstalk," Uma said.

"How am I the Baker's Wife?" Jane demanded of the group at large.

"Because your audition was amazing, and so was mine!" Audrey said brightly. She twirled. "I'm Cinderella!"

"I fell asleep while we were watching; is there a chance the Witch and Cinderella's Prince have a steamy, hidden affair?" Harry asked hopefully.

"Cinderella's Prince already has, like, two affairs," Carlos said. "You can't have an affair with everybody."

"I don't want an affair with _everybody_ ; I want an affair with Uma."

"Thanks, Harry."

"Why am I the character who screams a lot and gets stepped on?" Mal asked.

"Ha. Evie steps on you."

"Shut up, Jay."

"Well, there are no small parts," Evie said with dignity. "Only small actors."

"I marry Chad," Mal pouted.

"I'm sure you got Rapunzel because your voice can lure people through the woods," Ben told her.

"I'm also one of the wicked stepsisters."

"Well, that way you're maximizing on stage time, right?"

"Does anyone know a guy who might want to play Mysterious Man and the Narrator?" Audrey asked earnestly. "So many of our drama guys have graduated..."

"No worries; Jonas can probably join," Uma said. "The crew will be helping out backstage anyway."

"Wait, they will?" Carlos said, a look of dread taking over his face.

"Their captain's the star of the play; of course they're helping out," Harry said.

"I have to stage manage a crew of pirates." Carlos dropped his forehead into his hand.

"I just realized something hilarious," Chad announced.

"And I am already laughing, so no need to say it," Mal said, perky with sarcasm.

"Jane steals _your_ boyfriend _and_ yours." He pointed at Mal, then at Uma.

Gil frowned. "The Witch has a boyfriend?"

"He means that, since she's playing the Baker's Wife, she'll be kissing Harry and Ben."

"Oh my goodness," Jane said, her eyes flying wide at the prospect of antagonizing two different classmates, and _magical_ classmates, and _formerly-evil_ magical classmates. She was toast for sure.

"Chill," Uma said. "It's just a play. Kissing my first mate in a school play isn't something I'd rip someone's tonsils out over."

"Um, for future reference," Audrey interjected, "what _is_ something you'd rip someone's tonsils out over?"

Uma smirked ominously and didn't answer.

"So our first rehearsal is this afternoon," Evie concluded, linking hands with Mal, who in turn linked hands with Ben. "Best of luck, everyone."

"Who needs luck?" Harry said, offering his arm to Uma and beckoning Gil over.

"Not me!" Audrey answered, obscenely cheerful.

They parted ways to go to their classes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, please comment! Thank you to everyone who encouraged me after the previous chapter!


	3. Cast Dynamics

"You're not quitting," Evie said with finality as she sat primly down into her seat at their cafeteria table. They were the first to arrive; everyone else was still in line getting food.

Mal growled, letting her head fall back in exasperation and near-slamming her tray down. "But _anyone_ could play Rapunzel. What's the point?"

"She didn't cast 'anyone'; she cast you. And good people follow through when they make commitments," Evie pointed out.

"This whole 'good' thing..."

"Don't even joke." Evie pointed her forefinger sternly.

Mal smirked. "You're no fun. I should go complain to Ben."

"You know you'll never get cast in a better role if you can't manage to give this your all," Evie half-sang, laying out her napkin. "Miss Charlotte loves overachievers; her best friend is Princess Tiana, you know. Of Maldonia."

"So?"

"So, I'm warming her up to me by taking on more responsibilities. I'm helping with costuming and special effects; by the end of the production, she'll love me."

"I thought Jay was doing special effects."

"Jay is on lighting and sound; I'll be helping out with fog, things like that. I know how to safely handle dry ice, after all."

"I'm surprised she doesn't just call up Elsa, since she's so chummy with the princesses."

Evie poked Mal in the side, causing her to squirm playfully. "Don't be a defeatist. If you want a great role, then make your role great."

"Evie's right," Ben said as he lowered into his seat on Mal's other side, followed soon after by Jay and Carlos across the table. 

Jay and Carlos appeared to have accustomed themselves to Auradon's portions, because they no longer piled their trays high with food or stuffed any in their pockets; they ate about as much as the other athletes ate, and they sat back as they did so (instead of hovering close to their plates, subconsciously ready to fight off anyone who went for their bounty).

Mal looked at her own plate and supposed that she was used to it, too. After all, she had a salad, and lettuce certainly wasn't going to give her the energy to win any fights.

"You always think Evie's right," Mal said, skewering the salad and shoveling a mound of lettuce and a single pierced cucumber slice into her mouth.

"That's because I'm always right," Evie said brightly. Mal poked _her_ side.

"Don't tell me you guys are talking about the play, too," Jay sighed. "Los won't stop worrying about the pirates."

"You know if they try anything we'll decimate them," Mal said with her mouth full.

"I'm not worried they'll try anything," Carlos said. "Uma has them under control, and she wouldn't let them embarrass her like that. I'm concerned that they won't acknowledge my authority as stage manager."

Mal shrugged. "Just rat them out to Shr...to their captain if they give you problems," she said, ignoring Evie's approving glance at her self-correction. "Like you said, if they embarrass her, they're toast."

Jay chuckled quietly at her word choice; they had collectively _guffawed_ back when they had first learned that Auradon used the word "toast" in the place of the more Isle-appropriate "dead meat".

"I'm sure the crew won't be a problem," Ben interjected. "Everyone says they're some of the best behaved."

"Who is everyone?" Mal asked, her eyes wide at the blatantly conflicting report; she knew for a fact that the pirates snuck through the halls at night, slept in each other's rooms, gambled Auradonians out of house and home (that Desiree girl had followed one aristocrat's son around for nearly an hour asking after the winged horse she was promised), stole supplies from the nurse's office, and probably a bunch of other stuff that would not have made them good marks on their Remedial Goodness test.

"Fairy Godmother told me that their teachers all say that they're adjusting well," Ben answered mildly. "They're attentive, they catch on to new subjects, or at least try to..."

"In class," Mal qualified pointedly. (She managed not to ask if _her_ teachers had said anything about _her_. She had discovered rather recently that she had a shockingly deep need for approval, and she was trying to shake it; she wanted to believe that she was choosing good for the sake of _being_ good, not just because it was goodness that would earn her positive reinforcement here. So that was another thing she was working on; doing good things that wouldn't earn her any praise or acknowledgement. Throwing away trash she found on the ground even when she was alone, magically lacing up people's shoes when they came untied as they walked, things like that.)

"And she said that the school hasn't had to take disciplinary action against any of them in about two weeks."

"So they're smart enough to not get caught." Something she had in common with them, incidentally.

"Well, if they're getting along in class and not doing anything bad that the school notices, then there's no harm done, right?"

"Hm," Mal said curtly, and Ben took the hint that she was done talking about the stupid well-adjusted pirates. The idea that even those psychos could get along in Auradon made her a little queasy, because it carried with it the implication that _any_ of the people she had written off, the people who she had assumed _couldn't_ be brought here...

And it also meant that _she_ had no excuse for her difficulties adjusting. Why did it seem like everyone else had it easy?

As if reading her mind, Ben mused, "You know, I think we should have support groups for people who survived the Isle."

Mal and Jay both snorted; Carlos shook his head and said, with his mouth half-full of burger, "No one would go."

"What if you four advocated for it-"

This time, all four of them chorused, "No one would go." Even Evie.

"They'd see it as sappy, weak do-gooder stuff," Jay said.

"But they _are_ do-gooders now," Ben pointed out.

"They're learning," Evie said. "I doubt anyone is ready to drop all of their walls at once, especially not at an organized session."

"Like, 'Hey, on Tuesday we're all going to hang out in a room and cry about our childhoods, because the king told us to'," Jay said. "Wouldn't fly."

"If they showed up at all, it would be to mock you," Carlos said.

"And I'm not wasting what's left of my rep on something that won't work either way," Mal said.

"What if..."

Mal couldn't help smiling at Ben's persistence. He didn't get it, but he was trying so hard to help that it had shot past aggravating and was now freaking adorable. (Ugh, these euphemisms did not feel as good as cursing. How did cursing make one a bad person anyway?)

"What if we got Uma in on it?"

Mal's smile dropped, but she grudgingly considered the proposition for his sake. "That'd be a hard sell. Shr... _She_ can't risk showing weakness right now, and she...wouldn't force everyone to do something that she wouldn't do herself."

It felt uncomfortable, saying those words, not because she disagreed or because they weren't true, but because talking about Uma's virtues felt bizarrely vulnerable. For a while, she had thought that it was just because it was embarrassing to understand someone as well as she felt she understood Uma (sometimes), but Ben's past comments about their similarity had recently caused her to wonder if it perhaps ran deeper. She and Uma _were_ very alike; it was why they had been friends, back in early childhood. And seeing herself in Uma was and always had been an utter curse. When they were both young on the Isle, the other girl's passion and emotionality had felt like she was broadcasting Mal's own hidden weakness, everything pathetic and exploitable within her, to the whole town. Once Mal was freed and Uma remained on the Isle, Mal had seen Uma's criminal acts and survival instincts the way they would have been seen in Auradon, the very things that she had learned to hate about herself. And now here in Auradon, Uma's charitable impulses and barely-veiled selfless acts seemed to shine neon-colored lights on all the good Mal failed to do, the "weakness" that she had successfully suppressed for so long that now sometimes she feared she couldn't muster it.

Wow, she absolutely could _not_ take part in a support group.

"Either suggesting it in the first place would make a lot of them lose respect for her, or going through with it would," Jay said. "Either way, she loses power over some of the Isle kids. Maybe even some of her crew."

"...and then we'll see how their good behavior holds," Mal muttered grimly.

"So I guess I'll try to think of something else," Ben said. "I really want you guys to be able to work through the stuff you endured."

Evie forced a smile. "We're working through it. Thank you, Ben." She blew him a kiss, since she couldn't easily reach him from where she was sitting.

The conversation moved to lighter topics, while privately Ben kept thinking his idea over. The problem was still one that needed addressing, even if his solution wouldn't work. But then, theatre was a good cathartic outlet; maybe the drama club would be something for the Isle kids to bond over.

...

"What time is it?" Harry asked, his arms too full of Uma's books for him to check his watch.

"Little hand three, big hand one," Gil answered.

"Drama practice starts at short-hand-four, long-hand-twelve," Harry said. "We have twenty minutes."

Uma smiled as she kept stride between them. Harry's math and Gil's reading were getting better, but neither of them was making an effort to figure out clocks. They already had their system, after all; they described time based on where the hands were placed, and they rounded every interval that was less than an hour to either "time for" ("It's time for class!") or twenty minutes.

"Do you guys not know how to tell time?" Doug asked, sounding shocked. "Didn't someone teach you?"

Uma held back from rolling her eyes because Doug was tutoring Gil and because Auradonians tended to take eye rolls as highly offensive, but boy was this guy both ridiculously naive to the point of obtuseness (He _knew_ that there was a lot that they hadn't been taught; why was he still shocked every time?!) and something of a know-it-all. They walked with him as a favor in return for his tutoring; Uma doubted that Doug was aware of it, as she hadn't overtly stated it when she'd first offered that he walk with them, but this arrangement made Doug a non-target to other Isle kids, as much so as the crew was. No one would pick his pockets or scam him, and even Auradon kids would be hesitant to bully him. And Doug was annoying, but Gil's reading was getting better, so he was under their protection for now.

(Surprisingly, a _couple_ of "heroes" had ended up under pirate protection. Not a lot, but more than the expected zero. Ginger even seemed to have found a girlfriend among the Romani exchange students, and the girlfriend appeared to be trying to join the crew.)

"We tell time; just differently," Gil said.

"It's fifty-five minutes, not twenty."

"It'll be twenty by the time you stop jabbering," Harry said. "What difference does it make, if we're not gonna sit and count it out?"

"It...You're supposed to know how to tell time."

Harry whistled to highlight how unconcerned he was. Uma glanced at Gil to make sure he wasn't taking Doug's tactless protestations to heart, but he was busy apologizing (He was going to _ace_ Remedial Goodness.) to some rich kid he had bumped into. (A glance at the departing noble showed that he was checking his pockets to be sure his possessions were still there; unnecessary in this case, but hey, these precious suckers were learning.)

"Evie could tell time."

"Evie was raised by someone who wanted her to marry a prince; it mattered to Queenie that she be literate," Uma said, and honestly it was probably a mistake to enter the conversation at all.

"Can _you_ tell time?" Doug asked her.

She could, but she wasn't trying to prove to Doug that she met Auradon's arbitrary standards for intelligence, or to one-up Harry and Gil, so she replied, "Can you hold your own in an ambush? Or make repairs to a pirate ship? Or navigate using the stars?"

"I...can't," Doug sighed, and the confession was appreciated.

Uma turned down a hallway and found, as expected, most of her crew. Some of them were just chatting and hanging out. Some of them were gambling with the Auradon kids; their playing cards and dice had been confiscated, so they were thumb wrestling and arm wrestling and playing Rock, Paper, Scissors. Some of them were studying, and she felt a rush of pride even though studying did tend to entail a non-zero amount of hitting each other with books.

Uma noticed Ginger and her girlfriend (who was on her lap) sitting in the corner. One of Ginger's bandanas was tied around her girlfriend's ankle, and another was being used as a ponytail holder in her girlfriend's hair (Crap, Uma was going to have to learn that girl's name.). Ginger was going all out to be sure that people knew the girl was protected.

"Captain," Gonzo exclaimed, reaching to take off his hat before remembering that he wasn't wearing one; they weren't allowed hats indoors, especially pirate hats, which the school apparently considered "gang paraphernalia".

The crew came to attention, some losing thumb wrestling matches in the process, many dropping to one knee or bowing in some way. The Auradonians looked between Uma and her crew uncomfortably, Doug included. Ginger's girlfriend bowed along with Ginger.

"Drama practice is in twenty minutes," Uma announced, ignoring the heroes. "Jonas, anything to report?" She beckoned for Jonas to walk with them as they left the crew to their fun, and Jonas gave her a run down on every minor incident anyone in the crew had had within the past twenty-four hours. About half had already been on her radar; the rest were new information, which she addressed in order: "I'll talk to Fairy Godmother about Aliri's teacher. Trev can get patched up in Gonzo's room. We can arrange for Bonny to have an escort when she goes by the...Doug, isn't this your stop?" They were outside the band room, and the bespectacled boy was still walking along with them, his brow furrowed as though he was suddenly so interested in VK affairs.

"Huh? Oh!" Doug blinked. "Right. Uh, bye." He ambled off.

Now Uma finally did roll her eyes, but she kept to her train of thought. "And someone can pay those tourney players a visit to remind them that Bonny is a part of our crew and we defend our crew. No brawls, if we can help it; none of us has gotten in trouble in thirteen days, now, and I'd like to keep that up."

"I'll tell them," Jonas said.

"And tell Dilaia she can ask me about joining the crew herself instead of through Ginger."

"I told Ginger you'd say that."

"How's our stock of bandages and sh-...and _stuff_."

"We're good; Desi grabbed more last night."

"Trust she remembered antiseptic this time?" Harry said.

"Yeah, she grabbed two bottles."

"She stole two bottles?" Gil exclaimed. "That's pretty impressi-"

"Gil? Shut up," Uma said calmly. "We're not on the Isle."

Gil zipped his lips, then opened the door so they could cross the lawn, to the next building over. Uma shaded her eyes as they stepped out into the too-bright sunlight; not having the clouds of the Isle _and_ not having her pirate hat was an adjustment, to say the least. Even the grass was too bright. Jonas, too, ducked his head away from the sun, and Harry's face was practically in his elbow. (Gil was still in the shadow of the door.)

"Desi also wanted me to let Harry know she beat his record for how many rolls of bandages she can carry at once," Jonas said slyly.

Harry scoffed. "Of course she did; she has enough free time to...' _visit_ ' the clinic every night, if she wants; I have other responsibilities." Harry glanced at Uma, then dramatically continued, " _Ergo_ , she's got a higher...likelihood of improvement. Statistical analysis, lads."

Uma grinned. (A pair of princes fled the vicinity, apparently convinced that anything that was making her smile was probably bad news. Technically, they weren't wrong.) "Is that all, Jonas?"

"That's everything to do with the crew. Want updates on the other Isle kids?"

Uma used one fingernail to remove dirt from under another fingernail, feigning nonchalance. "May as well." It was no secret that she was looking out for non-crew members, too, but no need to seem too invested.

"Celia told me a lot of the Neverland merkids keep having water thrown on them at random times by the Atlantican merkids."

Uma's eyes narrowed.

"Those Atlanticans should have learned by now to stop pushing your buttons," Gil chuckled, in a rare instance of him actually sounding quite evil. The Atlanticans had landed quite decisively on Uma's naughty list long ago.

"Did Celia give us their names?" Uma asked Jonas.

"No."

"I need a list. What else?"

"Zo said he saw some of the Ratcliffes and the Claytons get together and steal textbooks from some of the Hun kids to make them buy them back."

Uma rolled her eyes. "Gil, can you pop in on the Claytons and Ratcliffes tomorrow and teach them how to act?"

"Sure thing."

"What else?"

"Dizzy Tremaine's being bullied."

Uma was more annoyed than anything. Dizzy wasn't supposed to be her problem. "Princey and Blue can't manage to walk her to class?"

"It happens _in_ class; Celia told me that, too. Doesn't sound like it's an anti-VK thing. Just...Well, you know how Dizzy is."

She did know. The girl was impressively bullyable, on or off the Isle. It wasn't some 'precious, heart-of-goodness, too pure for this world' thing like Evie seemed to believe; put simply, Dizzy had basically the same core virtues and core flaws that most kids her age had, but she was entirely too loud about it and drew negative attention as a result, probably because Evie and Chad kept indulging her loud personality without teaching her how to manage it around people who were less friendly. Uma hoped it wouldn't fall to her to pick up the slack on Evie's and Chad's delusional-almost-to-the-point-of-negligence caretaking; she would have to talk to Evie about this at some point. In the meantime... "Harry, you know the drill."

"Roger that, Captain." Normally, the drill was to rob Dizzy just as a cover so it didn't seem like they were pulling any hero crap and to cow whoever was messing with her 'while he was at it', but Harry was creative enough to adapt the ruse to be Auradon-appropriate. Uma trusted that she didn't have to micromanage the fine details.

"Anything else?"

"That's all I got," Jonas said.

"Good. Do you want to be in the play?" Uma added. "They're short a guy."

"Would I have to sing?"

"Yes."

"Would I have to dance?"

"Not if you suck."

"Would they make me wear-?"

"Do you want to be in the play or not?"

"Sure."

"See you at practice."

Jonas left them just as they were entering the Residence Hall, where they intended to drop off their books and school bags. None of them trusted their lockers with anything they needed, whereas their room was fortified in ways that only pirates knew how.

...

Audrey was the first to arrive in the auditorium. She couldn't help feeling giddy, seeing that Miss La Bouff had already arranged chairs on the stage in the telltale circle that signified they were doing a read-through. This was going to be so much fun.

She located the cast sign-in clipboard (It was in the orchestra pit; how had it gotten there?), and by the time she had set it in its usual place onstage and signed her name (in glittery ink) in the first slot, Dizzy had arrived, dragging Evie behind her and babbling about how much fun they were going to have.

"I rewatched the play during breakfast _and_ lunch," she was saying. "I want to know all my lines!"

"I'm sure Miss Charlotte will love that," Evie said genuinely. "Good afternoon, Audrey."

"Good afternoon," Audrey returned. She found it easier to like Evie than Mal. Audrey was _trying_ not to be petty, as she knew that she hadn't been very nice when the VKs had first arrived, but she couldn't help feeling that the way Mal had forcibly stolen Ben, in front of everyone, had been rather below the belt, and it was hard for her not to focus on _that_ instead of on Mal's defeat of Maleficent whenever the two held a conversation. Evie, however, had only ever been _proportionately_ catty with Audrey. The correct level of passive aggression, and that was when they weren't hitting it off due to their mutual enjoyment of beauty, or royalty, or theatre. "The sign-in sheet is over here."

Then she went to stand off to the side of the room by herself and practice her songs.

Because she wasn't going to be petty, but she would _not_ let anyone in this production out-sing her.

Jay and Carlos walked in after a few minutes, which she ignored to keep practicing.

The _next_ arrivals were impossible to ignore; they were plentiful and noisy and and animated and caused Audrey to reflexively tense up. It took her a second to realize, through the bewilderment, that this was probably Uma's crew. She recognized a couple of them as having scammed money out of a few of her friends, or else as having had pirate hats confiscated from them in class. The procession of former Isle residents made a casual beeline for the wings of the stage, sparing the room's other occupants scarcely a glance.

"Why so flustered?" Harry's voice caused her to jump a foot in the air. "It's like yeh've never seen a pirate crew before." He seemed to have materialized a couple of feet away, along with Uma. Audrey wondered why, when the room was so large, they had chosen _her_ part of the room to stand in, but like true pirates, they were making themselves at home; Harry, for one, was leaning against the wall and filing his nails like he owned the place.

"Don't sweat it," Uma herself said, gesturing at the crew. "I said they'd help out, remember?" Now Uma...Well, she was _also_ easier for Audrey to like than Mal, partially because she and Audrey had found, by pure circumstance, that just by making eye contact at the appropriate times they could throw insane amounts of shade. But Uma was intimidating, and intense, and _not_ someone that Audrey often started conversations with. It was weird; in a group setting, they allied themselves readily, but in a one-on-one capacity, they made each other extremely uncomfortable. ( _"I need to go shopping; these colors do not work for me anymore." "I'm saving my money in case someone on the crew ever needs a doctor. Or bail." "That's...cool." "Not really."_ ) The daughter of Ursula's distaste for pretense clashed horribly with Audrey's tendency to sugarcoat things.

"Right," Audrey acknowledged, forcing herself to stop glancing nervously at the gaggle of pirates as they hopped onstage. Now that she really looked at Uma and Harry, it was clear from the way they were standing that Uma had deliberately approached her and Harry had followed Uma. Man, Mulan and Shang codified the Power Couple, at least for Audrey, but these two were certainly up there. They weren't allowed to carry swords anymore, not at school, but Audrey didn't doubt that either of them could take her down with their bare hands in under five seconds. "I'm glad there's so many, then; we'll need people to help with scenery changes, operate the cow, transport props..."

"Ooh, place bets now on who operates the cow," Harry said.

"Desi's gonna fight for it, _hard_ ," Uma said, "but I think it's gonna end up being Gonzo."

"I think it'll be Hakim."

"Doubt it."

"Yeh willing to bet my jacket on it?"

"You really want your jacket back."

"As much as I love seeing you in it, I also love wearing it, love."

"And you're willing to risk me getting another one of your jackets if I win? You're on. Dree, you wanna get in on this? You can't have one of his jackets, but you can probably get some nail polish out of him."

"No thanks," Audrey said, through a nervous giggle. "He said his nail polish is made of rattlesnake venom."

"Not true," Harry said, holding up a finger. "It wasn't a rattlesnake."

"Also, I think gambling is against the rules."

"Gambling on school sporting events is," Uma corrected readily. "Nothing in the rule book bans gambling in general. Fairy Godmother just happens to have a personal dislike for it, hence her unlawfully confiscating my crew's playing cards."

"And dice," Harry interjected.

"Come on, you guys know you stole them back." Audrey jumped _again_ at the new voice, as this time Mal had appeared behind her, with her arms crossed in an impressively indifferent-seeming way for someone who appeared to have gone out of her way to approach them.

Audrey was not sure what was happening. As a rule, Uma and Mal stayed away from each other, only sniping at one another in large group settings, where the tension was muffled by other people. By extension, Mal also kept interaction with Harry, Gil, and the rest of the pirates to a minimum, and Uma did not speak to Jay or Carlos (again, except in group settings) and only conversed with Evie or Ben in an official capacity.

Yet here they were, converging right where she had been trying to practice.

"Oh, we wouldn't dare steal from the Headmistress," Harry said, and while it was clear from his tone that he was joking, his expression could not have been less friendly as he regarded Uma's (former?) rival.

"Of course not," Mal said dryly. "Good people never steal."

She couldn't be sure, but Audrey suspected that some Isle political subtext was going on around her. Something important and incomprehensible. And from the way Harry was straightening up, Audrey couldn't help thinking that Mal had just issued a challenge of some kind.

Uma rolled her eyes and, rather than participate in the silent stand-off Mal and Harry appeared to be in, she demanded, "Something on your mind, sugarplum?"

Mal shrugged. "Thought you might be bothering Audrey."

Oh, spindles. Was she going to be dragged into this? Audrey started to just walk away, but Mal threw her arm out, barring her path of retreat, and sent her a look as if to say, _Don't worry; I got this._ Then smiled faux-sweetly at Uma.

"So yeh decided to bother _us?"_ Harry surmised sardonically.

"Noticed you seem to have claimed Doug, too," Mal said, and Audrey wasn't sure if she wanted to laugh or cover her face. Was this a battle about which gang's _claim_ she was? Why did Mal even care?! It was sort of touching (Mal believed she was _defending_ her.), but also a little terrifying. "Are you collecting my friends' exes or something?"

Ow. That one kind of hurt. Like, Audrey didn't have romantic feelings for Ben any more, for a number of reasons (Not the least of which being that she wanted a significant other who _adored_ her.), but somehow being referred to as Ben's ex made her feel...trivialized, somehow.

The look that now crossed Uma's face gave the impression that Mal was the most hilarious person she'd ever spoken to. "It is a _riot_ that you still think everything I do is about you," she said. "Doug tutors Gil. Next question?"

Mal tried to look unfazed by this revelation, but her blush gave her away. "Well, what do you want with Audrey?"

Audrey, for one, was tired of being an accessory to this situation, and she doubted that any of the three Isle kids before her would offer her a chance to speak for herself. In her shrillest voice (which she had found quite useful when she was being ignored), she announced, "I'm trying to practice!" and then ducked under Mal's arm and flounced away.

She didn't look back as she found a new spot to practice her songs in, but she did hear Mal behind her breezily saying, "Well, call that a draw then."

...

Charlotte squealed when she saw that all of them had arrived. They were all seated on the stage, chattering idly. They weren't all together, which was not ideal; they sat in clumps, in cliques, which she did not believe made for a very unified cast. But that issue could wait; it was the first day of practice, and everyone was here. "This is just _excitin'!_ Everyone come up to the box and take a script. This first practice will be a read-through. Since we don't have a cast member for the Narrator and the Mysterious Man-"

"Jonas can do it," Uma said, pointing out Jonas.

Charlotte beamed at the new arrival. "You're volunteering?"

"Sure," Jonas said. "It's that or help with the ropes and the props like the rest of the crew is doing."

"The...?" Charlotte couldn't help but to doubt that the boy meant "crew" in the theatrical context, and this confused her. "Beg pardon?"

"I told you I have some people willing to help out backstage," Uma reminded her.

"Uma's captain of a pirate crew," Audrey explained, with a forced smile that was clearly meant to convey that she found the matter as odd as Charlotte did.

"Oh right, I guess Fairy Godmother wouldn't have told you," Uma mused. "Seeing as she disapproves."

"I feel like it kind of should have come up anyway," Jane said, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. "Having to figure it out during the course of a conversation is no carriage ride."

"Is the pirate crew here?" Charlotte employed all of her skills as a socialite (as well as the fact that this honestly wasn't the weirdest thing she'd ever had to deal with, as an Orleans girl whose best friend had briefly been a frog) to make that strange sentence sound natural.

In answer to her question, several heads poked out of the curtains, and hands (some gloved, some bandaged) waved at her.

"Well...the more the merrier. We don't need much done backstage today, so all y'all can just let Carlos teach you the ropes."

The crew disappeared backstage again, some with witty parting remarks like "Aye aye, Captain's director."

Charlotte took a seat in the circle, which had lost its shape quite noticeably, as a consequence of the kids having grouped off. Most of the Isle kids, with the exceptions of Evie and Uma, were sitting in their chairs backwards. Well, upon closer examination, Gil was actually sitting in his sideways, so that Uma could prop her feet on his lap.

"Alright!" Charlotte said. "I have an idea! How about we sit in groups based on what characters you will be interacting with in the scene. So, for Scene One, that means..."

It meant that Ben, Jane, Dizzy, and Uma sat together; it meant that Mal and Evie stayed next to each other but Audrey sat with them. As Charlotte rattled off the directions, she saw a hint of resistance in her cast for the first time. The girl who played Jack's Mother, some niece or something of one of Beast's advisors, did not want to sit next to Gil, especially once her initial reluctance caused Harry (not in this scene and therefore under no obligation to move) to glare at her. Uma made an annoyed comment along the lines of "Oh, so all the _ladies_ have to move?" in response to Jane and Dizzy moving to sit with Ben even though they were already sitting near enough to each other that it would have made more sense for Ben and Uma to move toward _them_ (although Charlotte suspected, just from the pirate crew's behavior, that Uma was not normally one to move for anyone). Audrey and the girl playing Lucinda did not complain about sitting with Mal and Evie, but the atmosphere between the four was strained.

Yes, cast synergy was needed, definitely.

She could only imagine how Uma's and Mal's scenes together would go over, or Harry's and Chad's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, please comment!


	4. Rehearsal: Prologue- FULL CAST

"So..." Gil stared at the rehearsal calendar that they had just retrieved from the box that, last rehearsal, had carried their scripts. Paper here was so thin, it was hard to get used to. He had accidentally ruined a few of his textbooks on the first day, expecting them to be stronger; on the Isle, you didn't put important information on anything flimsy or fragile. Then again, at least this paper couldn't give you splinters; it could only cut you with its edges. "...There will be a rehearsal every day, but not everyone goes to all of them?"

"Right," Uma confirmed. "When the box says 'full cast', everyone goes. Other than that, you only go if the box says 'Jack', Harry only goes if the box says 'Prince' or 'Wolf', and I only go if the box says 'Witch'."

"But what if the box says 'Jack' but it doesn't say 'Prince', 'Wolf', or 'Witch'?"

"Then you go and we don't."

"Excuse me," Chad said, striding up to them.

(A smile of intrigued amusement spread on Uma's face. So many people here, especially the boys, liked to walk up to people with their shoulders back and their heads raised and literally everything about their posture suggesting that they wanted a fight; it had taken her a full day to gather that they didn't actually mean what their bodies implied. These princes just didn't know to be careful about how they approached people. They didn't know how their posing and strutting came across as threatening, or as wanting of a thorough thrashing. Well, a lot of them probably knew now. But not Chad Charming.)

"You're standing in the way of the box," Chad informed them.

So they were. The box of rehearsal schedules was behind them on the stage's edge; they had gotten here first, after all. On the Isle, that would mean that all of the box's contents were theirs, and she would probably arrange some kind of barter with Chad to get what he wanted from it, or he would try to fight them for it, if he was particularly stupid. But this was Auradon, and letting people have things (no bargains, no caveats) was Remedial Goodness 101, unless those people were starving children No, she wasn't bitter. These differences were funny, when they weren't horrifying.

"Help yourself," she said, stepping aside and taking Gil with her.

Harry was backstage with the crew, who could be heard joking around through the curtains. Audrey was also here early, but she was in a corner at the opposite side of the auditorium, practicing like she did whenever she arrived, and she kept shooting wary glances at her surroundings, as though worried that another claim dispute might erupt around her if she let her guard down. Uma was willing to accept that she was partially to blame for that. She gave the princess her space (It wasn't like she was _dying_ to associate with more Auradonians, anyway, even if Audrey was both a valuable resource for general information and an overall palatable person who was refreshingly disinclined to buttkissery, where Mal was concerned.), instead seating herself in the orchestra pit (followed by Gil) and returning her attention to the rehearsal schedule.

There was no ignoring it; a _lot_ of the boxes listed the Witch and Rapunzel. She would be seeing a lot of Mal. Gil would be seeing a lot of that annoying girl who played Jack's mother, which meant there was a chance that Uma would have to have a talk with her; she had made no secret of her distaste for Isle kids in the past. And Harry would be seeing a lot of Chad, which meant that the two of them would have to become okay with a lot of things real fast.

Putting the sheet aside for a second, Uma reached into her pocket and pulled out the tiny octopus ceramic that Ginger's girlfriend, Dilaia, had apparently made for her. ("You can keep it," she had said. "After all, it's thanks to you that I ever got to meet Ginger at all. I just...hope that you can consider letting me join the crew.") It wasn't uncommon for prospective crew members to give her gifts- usually charms for her boots (only Harry could give her charms for her bracelet) or whetstones, things like that. People who couldn't steal anything for her would offer help at the Chip Shoppe. But this...was so unabashedly _cute_. A little, tiny octopus, painted teal with a drawn-on face. She would never admit that she loved it, but Dilaia was as good as in. The idea of having a crew member who wasn't from the Isle...Well, there would be a trial period, definitely. She would be under scrutiny. If it didn't work, Uma wasn't going to force it to.

"This is weird," Gil commented.

Uma looked up from object, shoving it back into her pocket. "What is?"

"Chad's normally the last to show up. It's time for practice" (Seven minutes til, sure.) "and Mal's crew aren't here."

True. Mal and Ben tended to slink in whenever they felt like it (short of actually being late, because despite being a hot mess, Ben was vigilant about that sort of thing), but Evie and Dizzy were usually some of the first to arrive.

Suddenly, and not a full ten seconds after Gil mentioned their absence, Carlos, Jane, and Dizzy ran in.

That is, Carlos ran in, hand-in-hand with Dizzy and Jane, and the smaller girls stumbled after him, barely keeping pace with his foot speed. As soon as they were through the door, Carlos let go of their hands (seemingly, bringing them here had been his mission), but he didn't stop running; in fact, he made a direct beeline for Uma.

And Carlos was an Isle kid; he knew not to _run_ at anyone unless there was a reason.

Uma was somewhat impressed that he had managed to spot her in the orchestra pit within a second of entering the room.

"Talk, Freckles," Uma said while Carlos was skidding to a stop. By nature of the orchestra pit being, well, a pit, he was positioned above her, which she didn't love, but she was secure enough in her status and curious enough about his purpose here to not be preoccupied by altitude dynamics.

"You need to come get your guy," Carlos panted out.

"I _need_ to do what?" Uma raised an eyebrow.

Carlos sighed hard, as though annoyed by the need to rephrase. "Doug got himself into an argument with Evie, and now Mal is involved, so I think you might want to intervene."

"Zeus," Uma cursed, then hauled herself out of the pit and briskly followed Carlos out the door, Gil in her wake for the first few steps until she snapped her fingers and gestured for him to go get Harry. (Gil turned on his heels and ran backstage.) "What did the nerd do?"

"He made some sarcastic comment about their breakup; I don't really know what he said, but Evie didn't like it and you know how Mal gets."

"Yeah, she's a _great_ friend."

If Carlos picked up on Uma's sarcasm, he didn't acknowledge it.

They arrived at the hallway where Mal had a terrified Doug pinned to a wall by his band jacket collar, her eyes blazing with green fire. Jay stood nearby, looking casual but also clearly ready to intervene if it became necessary. A few paces away were Ben and Evie, Ben with his hand on Evie's back (and uncharacteristically managing to stay out of something for once) and Evie with a cool expression in place.

"Uma's here!" Carlos announced, and Mal's head turned abruptly toward them.

"Good," she said curtly. "Take your guy and get him out of my sight." She shoved Doug at Uma.

"I-I'm not her guy," Doug stammered out.

"First of all," Uma said, metal lining her tone, "you don't tell me what to do. Second, keep your purple talons off my claim. Third, turn off the traffic lights in your face, princess; I ain't scared of you."

Mal's irises dimmed, though her glare did not.

"Your claim?" Doug repeated, no longer sounding bewildered so much as wearily resigned.

"You tutor her second mate; this is kinda how Isle things work," Jay informed him.

Gil and Harry finally caught up, then, and moved to flank Uma.

"Sorry we're late, Captain," Harry quipped.

"Oh, you're right on time," Uma said. "The walking grapevine here was just about to explain what exactly is going on."

"I _told_ Doug that if he made another passive aggressive comment at Evie, we were going to have a problem," Mal said. "I warned him last time he pulled this crap."

"What did he say?" Gil asked.

"Guys," Evie interjected, "rehearsal starts in five minutes, and seeing my girlfriend shove my ex-boyfriend into the wall has made me feel way better, so I say we let bygones be bygones."

"C'mon, E; you know Shri... _Uma_...will hold a grudge about this unless we hash this out now."

Uma held up a hand, correctly predicting that Harry would otherwise start something over Mal's little almost-slip. "Get outta here, Doug," she said, without breaking eye contact with Mal. "We'll talk about this later."

Doug didn't need to be told twice; he was gone in two seconds.

"Control him," Mal said, and she seemed to be deliberately pulling from her cotillion training or something, because suddenly her tone was downright pacific, "and this doesn't happen again."

"This doesn't happen again, period, because he's under my protection," Uma said. "You have a problem with one of my claims, you come to me. Believe me, I'll be chatting with him about bothering Evie." (Proof that she had been in Auradon for a while: She was using the phrase "believe me" the way _they_ used it, instead of as a joke.)

"Guys," Ben finally stepped in, in a strained voice as though it had been killing him to refrain from saying anything for this long. "You don't necessarily have to make this a crew thing. This is Auradon; there are people you can go to, people in charge..."

"Yeah, I'm sure Fairy Godmother will favor the villain kid over the Auradon kid, Ben; justice is blind, right?" Mal snapped hotly, then caught herself, "Sorry, babe."

"It's fine," Ben assured her.

"But Chad got away with tearing us down in front of every hero on your parents' speed dial, and so will Doug if we tell Fairy Godmother. Some things call for Isle justice."

"Four minutes," Evie said.

Mal returned her gaze to Uma's. "Ben is right. We're in Auradon now, so let's be good people about this."

"I'd love to," Uma said, deliberately wearing a huge smile that she knew from experience irritated everyone it didn't terrify (with some margin of error; Harry and Gil reacted to her smile very differently).

"I lay off your claims, you police them better. Deal?"

Uma's smile fell at the implication that she was in any way neglecting her duties. Doug was a claim, not a crew member; policing him wasn't her job unless someone brought some problem to her attention, which Mal had failed to do. "Laying off my claims is the bare minimum, Fairy Tail."

"And so is making sure they don't insult my girlfriend, yet here we are. If you want, you can have Audrey, too."

"She can what?" Ben boggled.

"I think that's _Audrey's_ choice, not yours, Madame Boysenberry."

"You have a lot of nicknames for me. Did you, like, write them down? In a little journal?"

"Oh yeah, right next to all those formal addresses you 'wrote'."

"I feel like this is getting personal," Ben said.

"It was bound to anyway," Evie sighed, hooking her arm through Ben's. "Wait it out; it'll pass."

"If I may," Carlos said, raising his hand and earning Uma's attention and Mal's, "I think you two kind of already made the deal, but you're too busy insulting each other to notice."

"What do you mean?" Mal asked stiffly.

"Uma already said she'd deal with Doug; you already said you'd leave her claims alone if she dealt with Doug. That's it, right?"

"Three minutes," Evie said.

"I don't just want her to talk to Doug; I want a guarantee that it won't happen again," Mal said.

"You haven't earned her guarantee," Harry retorted, but Uma calmly reminded:

"Harry. We're _good_ people now."

Mal raised her eyebrows, waiting.

"How about this," Uma said. "If it happens again, I'm un-claiming him and he's all yours."

Mal looked warily pacified.

Ben cleared his throat. "This...feels like it's not a great solution."

Ignoring him, Uma carried on: "And if you go after one of my claims again instead of coming to me about it, I will crack your porcelain, doll face." 

Jay straightened out his casual posture as a warning, and likewise Harry took a step forward, but Uma ignored them, too. "Deal?" she said, putting out her hand.

Mal pursed her lips for a second, clearly irked by the comparatively peaceful resolution. "Deal."

They shook on it.

...

"Once upon a time," Jonas read, in his narrator voice that sounded eerily similar to the voice of his Magical History teacher.

"I wish," Audrey sang, from her spot kneeling at center-stage. She had the script open on the floor in front of her, but she was not reading from it because of course she wasn't.

"In a far-off kingdom..." Jonas continued.

"More than anything..."

"...lived a young maiden..."

"More than life...more than jewels..."

Jonas opened his mouth to keep delivering his narration, but suddenly Audrey was calling out:

"I said that wrong. Sorry, guys! I said that wrong." Her hand was fluttering around the vicinity of her face, not quite covering it but still giving the impression that she was mortified by her error. "I made jewels one syllable instead of two syllables. I'll get it next time."

(Jay turned off the karaoke track they were using, since the band and the orchestra wouldn't be joining them until the very last week of practices.)

"Audrey, puddin' pie, we've talked about this," Charlotte replied from her seat in the audience. "You gotta keep goin'. We're not gonna get it perfect in the early rehearsals, but we have to practice making it through the whole scene."

"But the audience wouldn't understand as well if I pronounced it like that," Audrey said. "The second syllable helps them to visualize the spelling of the word."

"True," Evie said, poking her head out from backstage. "Otherwise, she could be saying 'joules', the unit of energy."

"Nerd!" Jay called out from the sound booth.

Charlotte couldn't help chuckling a little, but still she insisted, "We're not grindin' our grits about enunciation today; this rehearsal is to get the blockin' down. Let's start again!"

Jay dutifully started up the karaoke track.

"Once upon a time..."

"I wish..."

"In a far-off kingdom..."

"More than anything..."

"...lived a young maiden..."

"More than life...more than jewels..."

"...a sad young lad..."

Gil was stage left, pretending to milk Harry (who was on all fours) because they didn't have a cow yet and Harry wasn't in this song anyway. He was squinting at his script, and he delivered his line, "I wish," on cue, but a little too promptly, ending up out of rhythm with the music.

There was a beat in which Jonas waited for the music to catch up, then he continued, "...and a childless baker..."

Ben and Jane, standing together stage right, sang, "I wish."

"...with his wife."

"More than anything," Gil sang, at the right time this time.

"More than the moon, I wish..."

"The king is giving a festival!" Audrey sang, pouring almost too much eagerness into the line, but then she was an excitable person.

"More than life..."

"I wish..."

"I wish to go to the festival," Audrey sang, this time with such a wistful tone that she was practically melting. (Charlotte had known what she was in for; Audrey was as melodramatic as she herself had been, as a girl. She took to performance like Charlotte's daddy took to Tiana's beignets.)

"More than riches..."

"And the ball!"

"I wish my cow would give us some milk," Gil said, gesturing pathetically at Harry, who was beginning to break into quiet snickers that Charlotte knew could prove hazardous to the scene if Gil had any difficulty ignoring him.

"More than anything!" Audrey sang, and her voice cracked just a tiny bit. Her hand flew to her mouth, her expression horrified, but she didn't stop the scene.

"I wish we had a child," Ben sing-lamented.

"Please pal," Gil sang, rubbing Harry's head, which was not helping the latter's steadily-increasing chuckles any.

"I want a child," Jane sang, not tapping into Ben's tragic energy so much as creating a sort of indignant energy of her own; where Ben's Baker lamented their lack of a child, Jane's 'Baker's Wife' almost _demanded_ one. Charlotte made note of the interesting choice; not half bad for the girl who had exclusively played child characters and extras just last year.

"Squeeze pal." Gil put his hands on Harry's back and shook him, and the dam broke then; Harry Hook loosed the shrillest and loudest of laughs and rolled onto his back, shoving at Gil playfully.

"Harry," Charlotte sighed amusedly, "ya can't be the cow if you can't keep it together."

Harry got back into position, and he said something to Gil that caused him to both laugh and blush.

They ran through the beginning of the song again with basically no hiccups, and continued up to the point when Evie, as Cinderella's Stepmother, strolled in with Mal and the girl playing Lucinda.

Well, more like _stomped_ in, as Evie walked in perfectly on-beat, in a pair of loud, gorgeous heeled sandals.

"You wish to go to the festival?" she said, so sweetly that Charlotte was _giddy_ with hatred for the perfectly insidious character.

"The poor girl's mother had died," Jonas interjected, and maybe he was bored by saying the same lines over and over again, because his narrator persona was steadily becoming a sarcastic parody of itself.

The three evil step-relatives delivered their overlapping lines teasing Cinderella about wanting to go to the festival (culminating in a unison: "The festival? The _king's_ festival?"), and for a first try it was fine, but they would need to practice that more. They got through the next couple of lines without incident, and then Mal, clearly becoming comfortable with her character, swooped down to where Audrey was pantomiming scrubbing the floor, grabbed one of her wrists, and held it up so high that Audrey almost lost her balance.

With a poisonous smile, Mal sang, "Look at your nails!"

The girl playing Lucinda bent down and delivered a light tug to the hem of Audrey's skirt. "Look at your dress!"

"People would laugh at you," Evie sang, and on the word "laugh" her tone went suddenly vicious; she all but growled it through her teeth, and the dark ridicule behind her eyes looked almost real, though clearly not directed at Audrey.

"Nevertheless," Audrey squeaked out, and Charlotte wasn't sure how much of the alarm in her wide eyes was acted. "I still wish to go to the festival and dance before the prince." (Her voice trailed off as the mockery of her step-relatives, singing similar words at the same time, grew louder, until they were the only ones who could be heard and she could very well have been mouthing it.)

Mal dropped Audrey's wrist, and Audrey started to fall over but caught herself, and the three evil characters cackled triumphantly. (Mal's cackle was slightly off-rhythm, but that could be fixed; it was easy to be off-beat if you didn't know the song well.)

"All three were beautiful of face but _vile_ of heart," Jonas's Narrator observed.

They breezed through the part in which Jack's Mother got her introduction, although when the girl gave the line "I wish the cow was full of milk!", she elected to smack Harry's shoulder, loud enough to be heard from the audience despite the loud instrumental track, and Harry was evidently less inclined to accept improvised abuse than Audrey was; he glared at the actress outright, and she must have noticed, because the rest of her lines were delivered very sheepishly. (Gil, too, did not look pleased with the girl playing his mother, although he didn't so much glare, as _scowl_.)

Over on stage right, Dizzy emerged from backstage (pointedly holding no script) and frolicked over to Ben and Jane, singing, "I wish...It's not for me, it's for my granny in the woods. A loaf of bread, please..." with perfect brightness. Then, she gripped one of Jane's hands with both of her own and all but begged, "...to bring my poor old hungry granny in the woods. Just a loaf of bread, please."

Charlotte felt a pang in her heart, and she couldn't stop to sort through her vague thoughts about the Isle and poverty and begging, because now it was back to Cinderella's story and Evie was delivering her lines again, also too perfectly, too familiar with casual cruelty:

"I have emptied a pot of lentils into the ashes for you," she said, mockingly, as though it were a favor. "If you have picked them out again in two hours' time, you shall go to the ball with us." Clearly deriving so much joy from stringing the poor girl along.

As Little Red sang to wheedle more pastries from the Baker and the Baker's Wife, Audrey sang to call the birds to pick up the lentils. Her enunciation was perfect, her high notes so sweet that Charlotte was positive she was deliberately making up for her voice crack earlier, and her hands raised as though to welcome the birds into her home. (Jane briefly stopped what she was doing to silently applaud.)

The focus returned to Jack's story, and the girl playing Jack's Mother had apparently worked her trepidation over antagonizing Harry and Gil into some sort of rage or something, because suddenly she was delivering her lines quite aggressively. She didn't dare touch Harry again, even as her character described everything physically wrong with the cow, but each word she said had a disproportionately biting tone, and as such Harry kept glaring and Gil kept scowling as he delivered his own lines.

Mercifully, their part ended quickly, and it was back to Dizzy, Ben, and Jane. Dizzy did delighted figure eights around and between Ben and Jane as she sang out, "Into the woods, it's time to go. I hate to leave; I have to, though." She stopped the figure eights to instead skip in place for a while. "Into the woods. It's time, and so I must begin my journey." Then she started skipping back and forth in the immediate surroundings, not leaving the boundaries of what was understood to be the bakery but not keeping still, either. The sort of almost restless energy and chipper spirit with which she delivered her lines had to be real.

In a well-executed instance of improvised stage business, Jane pretended that Dizzy's skipping around was in danger of knocking things over, and she followed after her pretending to catch and straighten things.

Ben caught Dizzy's arm (gently) as she skipped by, and he instructed, "Don't stray and be late."

"And save some of those sweets for Granny," Jane reminded, exaggeratedly pretending that running after Dizzy had tired her out.

The rest of that bit went swimmingly, and then the narrative was tossed back to Cinderella.

Mal actually brought a chair over from backstage and plonked it down loudly, demanding, "Hurry up and do my hair, Cinderella!" then commenting over her shoulder at the girl playing Lucinda, "Are you really wearing that?"

The girl playing Lucinda moved to stand directly upstage of Mal (which was in-character and so excusable) and sang, "Here I found a little tear, Cinderella!" Then she, too, looked over her shoulder (Charlotte was going to have to teach them to stop doing that.) and asked Mal, "Can't you hide it with a hat?"

"You look beautiful," Audrey sang halfheartedly, moving Lucinda aside and going to twist at Mal's hair. "Mother said be good. Father said be nice. That was always their advice. So be nice, Cinderella. Good, Cinderella. Nice, good, good, nice..."

"Tighter," Mal ordered, aiming her pointy elbow backward at Audrey (but thankfully missing. She had probably known that she would miss...Charlotte hoped).

Audrey growled, then delivered the rest of her lines bitterly while twisting Mal's hair seemingly hard enough to hurt (though Mal didn't even flinch; Charlotte suspected that was more a matter of Mal's pain tolerance than of mercy on Audrey's part). "What's the good of being good if everyone is blind and you're always left behind? Never mind, Cinderella; kind Cinderella; nice, good, nice, kind, good, nice..."

Charlotte tensed up as Mal sprang up from the chair with an exaggerated yell of pain. It was in the script that Florinda hit Cinderella here, but given how little anyone had been pulling punches in this rehearsal, she worried that she would have to stop the scene if Mal _actually_...

But clearly Audrey had the same thought, because she only allowed Mal to swing her hand a fraction of an inch before she dropped to the floor as though she had been hit. Mal looked somewhat confused, but still delivered her line, "Not that tight."

"Sorry," Audrey said, although she was audibly relieved.

"Clod," Mal said, and she was blushing, perhaps embarrassed by Audrey's caution.

Soon after, it was the Witch's scene, and Uma walked onstage with her shoulders back (instead of hunched over, like she was supposed to be, but her stage presence was exquisite) as Ben and Jane pretended to cower, and Gil, who was supposed to be frozen when Jack wasn't a part of the scene, craned his neck to watch her, and Harry left his cow position to sit and watch, as well.

"W-W-We have no bread," Jane stammered out.

"Of course you have no bread," Uma answered, with a false pitying tone that brought to Charlotte's mind the words 'poor unfortunate soul'.

Ben's Baker warily moved in front of his wife and asked, in Ben's diplomatic tone, "What is it you wish?"

"It's not what I wish," Uma said innocently, placing her hand over her heart. "It's what _you_ wish." Then a grin spread across her face, and she pointed at Jane's midriff. "Nothing cooking in there, now is there?"

Jane looked crestfallen.

Uma went on to circle Ben and Jane, delivering the explanation of the Baker's family history. Her tone was dark and plaintive as she listed off the crimes of the Baker's father, and full of relish as she described how she could have punished him, and it was back to innocent as she said, "In return, however, I said 'Fair is fair; you can let me have the baby that your wife will bear...'". (And gleefully smug, as she tacked on, "'...and we'll call it square'.") It seemed she couldn't manage to say the line "...that we all might live happily ever after" without a great deal of derision, but that was hardly out of character.

Her onstage dynamic with Ben and Jane felt natural; the Witch was a force of nature, The Baker was trying to make sense of her, and The Baker's Wife was horrified. They worked off each other's reactions well. Jane briefly broke character to laugh at Uma's delivery of "Bang! Crash! The lightning flashed! And- well, that's another story, nevermind, but anyway..." Uma caught her laugh and smirked in response. She upped the mania as she described her taking the baby from the Baker's father, then upped the mock-pity as she described the curse she had laid on the Baker's family. It was a volatile performance.

"But I'm telling you the same I tell kings and queens," she said, advancing on Ben so angrily that, even though he was taller than she was, he backed up several steps, almost bumping into Jane. "Don't ever, never, _ever_ mess around with my greens!" She turned on Jane, who also took a startled step back. "Especially the beans."

The focus shifted back to Jack's story, and Gil and Harry were _not_ ready. Gil had lost his place in the script and flipped through it hastily as the girl playing his mother delivered her lines. He missed two of his cues, searching for his place, but the girl simply skipped his lines and carried on, which was good for the momentum of the scene (since they had to keep up with the music) but not great for her already-tenuous rapport with her castmates. At least she refrained from pinching Gil's ear, as the script demanded.

Back to the Witch at the bakery, and Uma said, tantalizingly slow, "You wish to have the curse reversed? I'll need a certain potion, first..."

Ben and Jane made a show of leaning in, curious.

"Go to the wood and bring me back...ONE." (They jumped, and she grinned.) "The cow as white as milk. Two: the cape as red as blood." (She pantomimed slitting someone's throat.) "Three: the hair as yellow as corn. Four: the slipper as pure as gold." Her voice turned almost gentle: "Bring me these before the chime of midnight in three days' time, and you shall have, I guarantee..." (She gestured as though plucking something from the heavens and throwing it into Jane's stomach.) "...a child as perfect as child can be."

Jane placed both hands over her stomach. Ben worked his mouth as if he had more questions but didn't know how to phrase them.

"Go to the wood!" Uma ordered, and rather than run offstage, she jumped into the orchestra pit.

Okay then.

Evie strutted onstage, tailed by Mal and the other girl, announcing, "Ladies, our carriage awaits!"

Audrey ran up to her, holding an invisible bowl of lentils, and deferentially asked, "Now may I go to the festival?"

"The festival?" Evie scoffed, knocking the imagined bowl out of Audrey's hands and putting on a stiff, impatient smile. "Darling, those nails; darling those clothes. The lentils are one thing, but darling with those you'd make us the fools of the festival and mortify the prince!" She batted Audrey aside, at least not shoving her, and drawled out, "We must be gone."

Audrey shambled back to her original position and whimpered out an utterly helpless "I wish..."

Back at the Bakery, the Baker and his Wife discovered the Witch's stolen beans in an old jacket.

"We'll take them with us," Jane said, more in the tone of someone deciding on a snack from a vending machine than someone preparing for a quest, but that was a nitpick and Charlotte wouldn't let it distract her.

"No; you are not coming," Ben said, shaking his head as though the idea was absurd.

"I know you're fearful of the woods at night," Jane said, almost stepping closer to him (as a wife might) but hesitating. Cheese and crackers, these kids refused to touch each other for more than a second.

"The spell is on my house," Ben sang insistently. "Only I can lift the spell..."

"No, no, the spell is on our house," Jane sang over him, frowning. "We must lift the spell together; the spell is on _our_ house!" Then she looked down and noticed that she had taken a step closer to Ben in the heat of the moment, so she stepped back.

Good gravy.

The Baker and his Wife sang through the ingredients for the potion. Meanwhile, a still-miserable Cinderella sang, "I still wish to go to the festival...But am I ever to get to the festival?" She gasped, her eyes lighting up. "I know! I'll visit Mother's grave! The grave at the hazel tree! And tell her I just want to go to the king's festival!"

Now it was time for both the Baker and Cinderella to set off, but clearly neither quite knew where to go, causing them to bump into each other as they sang their unison bit. They would need to choreograph a path of movement, at some point. Charlotte mulled over whether the collision should be kept in, since it did contribute to a tone of chaotic urgency.

When Jack had to take his cow to market, Gil physically lifted Harry and carried him across the stage; Harry giggled audibly, and Audrey, Ben, and Jane laughed when they noticed. Again, though, Gil missed a couple of his lines, trying to move while reading the script.

The lines overlapped and then converged, and yes they would need to choreograph this in the near future, because everyone was just wandering and barely missing each other. But this was a first try, and for what it was, they were doing great.

...

Rehearsals of the song drew to a close, and the actors sat at the edge of the stage, awaiting notes from Charlotte. Evie and Mal looked paler than usual, and they sat somewhat curled in on each other. Audrey sat as far away from them as possible, meaning she sat among the pirates. Dizzy sat with Chad, continually sending worried looks in Evie's direction.

"Okay!" Charlotte called out brightly. "We really got some blockin' done today! I'm proud of our progress. I noticed a couple of things that could be improved. For example, some of you guys were manhandling your castmates." (Mal buried her face in her hands.) "I get that we're trying to be our characters, but let's make sure we talk to our fellow actors about what is and isn't okay before we improvise those kinds of things. We're all trying to have a good time here. On the whole, I loved everyone's delivery. Evie, darlin', those shoes made for a great entrance that first time, but every subsequent entrance and exit was too loud; can you try to tiptoe?"

"I can," Evie answered.

"Awesome. Uma, the way you circled Ben and Jane was great, but it caused some of your lines to be delivered behind them, which isn't something we want. Could you either walk faster when you're behind them or pause your lines until you get in front of them?"

"Sure," Uma said with a shrug.

"Also, you jumped into the orchestra pit. Are...you okay?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"...You didn't hurt your ankle or anything?"

"I know how to land," Uma assured.

"Alright. Y'know you can't do that once the orchestra and band come, right?"

"What if I promise I won't land on anyone?"

"I think it would prove an unneeded distraction to the people playing instruments."

"Fine."

"Step-sisters, your characterization was great, but try not to turn downstage when you deliver your lines. Same to you, Dizzy; your stage business was perfect, but sometimes you were facing downstage. And all three of you could project more."

"I get to be _louder?"_ Dizzy said, sounding awed by the idea.

"Absolutely; we want the back row to hear you. Think you can do that?"

"I can do it."

"Jack and Mom, you can't hate each other," Charlotte said straightforwardly. "Not on this stage. In the hallways of Auradon Prep, you can have a blood rivalry, but on this stage, you are blood relatives. Baker and Wife, be a little warmer. You don't have to lock lips or nothin', but darlin', touch his arm every now and then. His face, even."

"You're right, sorry," Jane sighed. "It just...it threw me off, knowing that Mal and Evie were right there..."

"We told you, we don't mind," Evie said, with a brittle smile. "Not me, not Mal, not Ben. You have our blessing."

"And we will be choreographing that walk sequence at the end, because that was a hot mess," Charlotte finished, inspiring stilted laughter. The vibe was weird, today. She suspected that a few of the villain kids had tapped into something that they hadn't expected to, which would explain Mal's and Evie's pallor. Why these kids hadn't been given counseling as soon as their feet touched Auradon soil was beyond her. "That's it for notes. This was a great rehearsal; all y'all need to give yourselves a round of applause."

They clapped, and when Charlotte released them, they dispersed into their clumps of social groups. Mal, Evie, and their bunch exited silently. Dizzy talked Chad's ear off about her own acting choices, and Chad made a show of sighing but periodically threw in little agreements and encouragements. Charlotte noticed that Audrey walked off in the company of the pirates, and made mental note of what an odd friendship that must be.

...

Mal felt physically sick. 

She had known, when she was pinning Doug against the wall earlier, that some of her Isle self was beginning to shine through, but that had been different; that had been Auradon Mal wielding Isle Mal consciously. Onstage, though...Isle Mal had been her. She had been her old self, had felt the glee at tormenting someone who didn't have the power to stop her.

It was frustrating, mortifying, how inept it seemed she was at keeping herself Good. At random times, it seemed, Evil would creep up on her, and she would succumb so easily, so comfortably...

She pushed all of this down for the moment, because Evie was also having a hard time. Mal had to accept that she had just been her past self, but Evie had to accept that she had just been her mother.

...

Audrey _knew_ that Uma was conscious of her walking with them, even though Uma was the only one of the pirates who did not initially glance Audrey's way. Gil sent Audrey several curious looks; Harry looked, alternatingly, amused and vaguely suspicious. But Uma kept her eyes trained forward as she pinged orders and questions off of various members of her crew, who had just sort of accumulated around them as they walked. (Audrey was impressed with her own courage, continuing to walk in such company.)

The first time Uma actually turned to look at someone, it was a girl over to Audrey's left. A girl who, now that Audrey noticed her, wasn't one of the pirates at all, though she walked hand-in-hand with a red-haired pirate girl.

"Dilaia," Uma addressed her. "You're on bandage-cutting duty tonight. Bonny will show you how."

The girl's (Dilaia's) face broke into a stunned smile, and she said, "Yes, Captain!"

Uma nodded, facing front again. "Don't let us down."

"Welcome to the crew," the red-haired girl said, sharing a triumphant grin with Dilaia and then kissing her nose.

Wait, were they still recruiting? Was the crew still growing, and not dissolving like Fairy Godmother had clearly intended it to when she banned pirate hats?

Uma looked over again, just in time to catch Audrey's shocked look, and she smirked.

Determined not to be pigeonholed (again!) as the naive, forever-out-of-her-depth princess, Audrey casually spoke up, "Well, that answers that. Ally totally said that you guys had extra medical supplies, but I thought she was just spreading rumors for fun."

"What, you gonna tell Fairy Godmother?" Uma asked placidly.

"Depends on what you're using them for." The words came out of Audrey before she properly thought them over, and in hindsight a straightforward "no" would probably have been both safer and more tactful. The ideals of a dutiful tattletale had been so instilled in her that somehow the coolest statement that came naturally to her was that she _maybe_ wouldn't rat them out.

The crew members were all looking at Audrey, not quite hostile but noticeably less warm. But none of them spoke.

Uma, in defiance of the tension, chuckled, long and loud. It wasn't exactly a friendly laugh, but to be fair they weren't exactly friends. "Art project," she answered sarcastically.

The crew members laughed as well, then, and the subject was dropped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who don't know, stage right and stage left are right and left from the perspective of the _actors_ , meaning they would be left and right from the perspective of the audience.
> 
> Also semi-important to mention, Charlotte does know the names of the actresses whose names aren't given; it's just that we, on this side of the story, don't know.
> 
> Please keep commenting! I love you guys!


	5. Audrey, Friend of Pirates

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, I meant for this chapter to be longer, but I ended up prioritizing just giving you guys _something_ instead of making you wait for me to get things straight.

In hindsight, Doug should have guessed that "We'll talk about this later" meant something different for pirates than it did for normal people.

He should have known, and maybe on some level he did know, but it still came as a complete surprise when Harry slung an arm around his shoulders the _moment_ he walked out of his room the next morning.

"Up early, Doug?" the first mate said pleasantly, ignoring Doug's startled exclamation.

"Were you waiting outside my door?" Doug blurted out.

"Captain wants to talk," was Harry's unabashed response. Why he called his girlfriend 'Captain' so much, Doug declined to ponder. Isle kids were weird about relationships; that much he knew firsthand.

"Right now?"

"That's right, Doug."

He allowed himself to be steered by Harry (not that he could exactly do anything else) out of the residence building, across the lawn, and into the building where his homeroom would be anyway. Their trek did not draw very many eyes, probably _because_ they were both so casual about it. Unsurprisingly, he was led to the hallway that the pirates had ostensibly claimed as their own, where they were, as usual, studying and gambling and socializing, either standing or sitting on the floor or in chairs and desks dragged from empty classrooms. At the end of the hall, Uma was leaning against the wall, calmly filing her nails, clearly in wait.

To Doug's surprise, Audrey was there, too. She was leaning against the wall right next to Uma, her pink sundress hilariously out of place among the pirates, flipping through a current events magazine and intermittently giving Uma her paraphrased, embellished summaries of each article. "So, San Fransokyo has had clean energy forever, and Corona's on solar, obvs, but somehow Agrabah is still having an energy crisis?"

"It's because their energy was magic-based, before it was illegal," Uma said shrewdly. "Genie magic was everywhere, way back when, and it's hard to suddenly have to use a different power source for literally everything. Not that King Adam gave two donkey craps about other kingdoms' and creatures' relationship with magic. The only reason Neverland is fine is because the indigenous tribes already knew how to run things without pixie dust." (Doug was inclined to doubt that this was all true, because he hadn't heard a thing about it in History of Magic.)

"There's a rumor that they totally still have magic in Neverland and they're just keeping it hidden. There's, like, bizarre energy readings over there sometimes, and a lot of the older residents are supes well-preserved, like there's still something keeping them from aging at a normal rate."

Uma made an interested noise. "Good for them. They could have bothered to give asylum to more magical creatures, if that's true."

Harry and Doug arrived at the end of the hallway, then.

Uma looked up from her fingernails. "Thanks, Harry," she said, then snagged the leg of an unoccupied chair with her foot and kicked the chair over to Doug. "Sit."

Doug sat, his arms crossed. "Am I on trial?" he asked sardonically. He glanced at Audrey, hoping to share a commiserating glance over the strangeness of these pirates, but Audrey only watched the proceedings curiously.

"At this point, I don't even care what you said to Evie; Audrey got the gist from witnesses, anyway," Uma said boredly. "Just know that if you do it again, I'm gonna withdraw my protection and leave you to Mal."

"To be fair, I didn't know I was under your protection in the first place," Doug said. Not exactly true; he had picked up on the fact that walking with Uma, Harry, and Gil was like walking in a bubble, in which no one from the Isle or Auradon did or said anything to him. He had never been so distinctly unbothered as he had been in their escort, not even before the villain kids arrived. "If I was, why did Mal attack me?"

"She wasn't supposed to," Uma said curtly, "but that's between me and her. What you need to worry about is not bothering her girlfriend anymore."

"Were there any consequences for her attacking me even though she wasn't supposed to?" Doug demanded.

"That's not really your business, Four Eyes. Like I said, that's between me and her. While you're tutoring Gil, you're under my protection, but I can get Gil another tutor."

She totally could. And it occurred to Doug that not being the pirates' claim _anymore_ might actually be worse than never having been their claim in the first place. Would everyone notice him suddenly walking the hallways alone? He wouldn't be in literal danger, of course (except maybe from Mal, depending on how serious she was about the concept of goodness at any given time), but he was beginning to remember how inconvenient traversing the school alone could be as a nerd with his level of sarcasm and open condescension.

"We clear?" Uma asked.

"Yes," Doug said.

Uma checked her watch. "You have twenty minutes til classes start."

It was a dismissal, so Doug stood. "Is it actually twenty minutes?" he had to ask.

A corner of Uma's mouth rose mirthlessly. "Thirty-three," she conceded, before gesturing for him to leave.

...

"Hey, Audrey! Can we talk?"

Audrey was surprised when Ben pulled her aside on her way to the lunch line. She was pretty sure that she could count the amount of times they'd had a one-on-one conversation, since breaking up, on one hand. "Sure," she said. It was weird talking to him now; there were a lot of things they hadn't acknowledged yet, and they still didn't really want to because it was, well, weird. She had known him forever, and yet it didn't feel right to be familiar with him anymore. He hadn't apologized for how things had ended between them, but now that she knew all that she did about the circumstances surrounding it, she was glad that he hadn't; if he had apologized, she would have _had_ to mention that Mal had deliberately stolen his free will, which risked segueing into how it worried her that he didn't seem to even consider that a legitimate transgression against him, and she didn't want to disparage Mal to his face; it would seem petty. So she didn't necessarily want him to apologize, but...well...he hadn't said _anything_ , as if he didn't know that she might feel something about the abrupt end to their highly-publicized courtship. He had just gone right to happy, with Mal. And that was great. For him. Minus the concerning amount of mind control.

"How has your day been?" Ben asked pleasantly.

"Oh, uh..." And it was also jarring to talk to fellow royalty when she had just finished talking to pirates. Somehow, she had momentarily forgotten about all of the pleasantries she had to wade through before getting to the point. To be fair, though, this was Ben, and she liked to think that despite the debacle that had been the end of their relationship, he still cared a _little_ bit about her answer. "It's been fine. Did you need something?"

"I've...noticed you're getting closer to Uma and her crew," Ben said. "That's great."

"Yeah." It was, but it was weird that he was bringing it up.

"I was wondering if you could do me a favor."

She didn't answer; just kept an open expression and waited for him to come out with it.

"Do you think you can convince them to see a dentist?"

That hadn't been what she was expecting. Well, she hadn't really known what to expect, but that hadn't been even close. "What?"

Ben looked uncomfortable. "Uma's convinced a lot of the Isle kids to see a doctor if they get badly injured or have pre-existing medical conditions, but it's been really hard to convince anyone to see a dentist. When I talked to Uma about it, she said she doesn't want some rich hero sticking knives in her mouth."

Audrey laughed; she couldn't help it. After a second, Ben cracked a smile, too.

"Okay, but it's serious," he said. "Jay had five and a half cavities when we finally got him looked at. We've been mostly able to convince kids Dizzy's age and younger, with some exceptions- we got Celia as far as the chair before her shadow started stealing tools from the hygienist -but a lot of the older ones refuse."

She tried to imagine Harry letting someone poke at his teeth and gums with an iron hook. Or worse, give him a filling. That poor dentist would have a rough time of it. "I don't know what you want me to do, Ben."

"Just...try to warm them up to the idea. Offer to go with them or something. Tell them it's not so bad."

Already Ben's suggestions rang hollow (Did he really think Uma wanted her hand held through a dentist appointment, and by Audrey of all people?), but still she shrugged and said, "I'll try."

"Thanks," Ben said, his expression brightening. "I'm just...really worried about them." He placed a hand on her shoulder awkwardly. "Thanks." Then he walked away.

Audrey sighed and proceeded to the lunch line. Almost immediately, Gil was at her side. She was getting used to how suddenly Isle kids could creep up on you. "What was that about?" he asked, sounding merely curious.

"Nothing important," Audrey said, before remembering that evasive responses did nothing but maintain distance. "Ben wants you guys to go to the dentist. He thinks I can convince you."

"Dentist. That's the teeth doctor, right?" Gil shuddered. "Sounds creepy. Like that scary story my brother told me about the fairy who steals little kids' teeth."

Audrey did not want to imagine what the Isle version tooth fairy concept was. She could only assume it didn't leave money under anyone's pillow. "The dentist isn't so bad. It's weird, but not bad."

Gil shrugged, as if to say 'I'm not the one you have to convince'. Which was true.

She doubted she could convince Uma to trust a dentist when _she_ wasn't even completely trusted herself. They were friends, sure, or at least they had started to hang out in a friendly capacity. The crew had mostly finished sizing Audrey up and they were now used to her sometimes walking or sitting among them. But Uma was still guarded. She was _casually_ distrustful, instead of actively wary. And she seemed to enjoy talking to Audrey. She didn't dismiss Audrey's babbling and hearsay, her rumors and conspiracy theories; if Audrey were to guess, she would say that it was because Uma was constantly learning more about Auradon. Even Audrey's most inane, shamelessly vapid tangents managed to flesh out this world, from which Uma had for so long been kept...well, been kept...

Okay, see that was the problem. Because Audrey had never had to really think about the Isle as a horror that was inflicted on people before. It was just the law. No magic, carriages must follow the speed limit, villains live over _there_. It hadn't even occurred to her (and certainly not been taught to her) until her early teens that not only the villains, but also their children, lived on the Isle. At the time, it hadn't seemed like such a travesty. It was nice that even horrible people got to have families, while still not being allowed to interact with good people. They were being merciful _and_ safe! Allowing them families; keeping them away. Now she had more information, from firsthand sources, and it made her feel guilty and uncomfortable. "Oh, get over it," Uma had snapped once, when a casual statement from her had caused Audrey to fall silent for a whole minute. "You were privileged, we were invisible. Being ashamed _now_ is just another kind of self-centered. Do something, if it means that much to you. Don't, if it doesn't."

In a way, Uma's bluntness made things easier to swallow. The worst-tasting medicine instead of the candy she'd been consuming for so long.

"If you're really torn up about it," a crew member named Desiree had added, jokingly rapping the back of her wrist against Audrey's shoulder, "you could always make a generous donation to an Isle kid in need."

"Right; little somethin' to jangle the pockets," a crew member named Gonzo had tacked on, grinning.

Audrey had giggled, then brightly said, "We should go shopping sometime!" and Uma had winked at her while the pirates eagerly voiced their agreement, and eventually they had found themselves making actual plans; they would be actually shopping together next week.

"See how long your guilt holds, shopping with Harry," one crew member had said, and received a casual one-finger salute in return, from the pirate in question.

As the plans had become more concrete, Uma's expression had become less and less playful, steadily transforming into the contemplative look she tended to wear when Audrey surprised her. At least, she thought that was what that look meant. Hoped, maybe?

"Are you sitting with us today?" Gil asked, jolting Audrey from the memory.

"Um..." She wanted to. Really, it would have been an immediate yes, but the frequency of her hanging out with the pirates had been making the other Auradon girls, specifically the ones she normally sat with, talk. It was stupid to care what they thought; she was sure that Uma never would, and it wasn't like they were as fun to be around as the crew was. Their investment in politics was limited to what impacted them personally, and since most of them were royals, that meant most of their talk was about marriages, which meant the topic of Mal and Ben came up more than Audrey would have liked. That Audrey might not want to talk about Mal and Ben, all things considered, never appeared to be on their radar, not even when the breakup was fresh. But they were still her friends, if not very good ones. They could talk about light topics, like cheerleading or drama club or dresses or whatever sport was in season, and that was nice. And more to the point, she knew for a fact that they would gossip about her just for the fun of it if the inclination and inspiration hit them. Sitting with pirates put a target on her back, especially when she didn't take the time to do damage control on her own behalf.

She met Gil's eyes, ready to answer no...and that was her first mistake, because Gil's eyes were so brown and his expression was so open, as though he hoped that she would choose to sit with them, and it warmed her heart because, as much as they would make note of her _not_ sitting with them, she knew that her other friends wouldn't really miss her. Maybe she had once lied to herself that they would, but Ben's public dumping of her had been an awakening in many ways. How many of her fellow cheerleaders had ignored her humiliation (maybe to an extent even heartbreak) in the jubilant thrall of _Oh, how romantic, what a grand gesture_? How many whispers had she intercepted about how "fast" she was for finding Chad so soon after the breakup, when Ben was the one who had...

She was getting bitter again. Fairy dust, fairy dust, fairy dust...

"You _want_ me to sit with you?" she asked, unable to entirely keep the novelty of the idea from bleeding through into her tone.

"Well, yeah," Gil said, as though it were obvious. "You're funny, and you say interesting things, and Uma likes you, and Harry likes you."

"They do?" It shouldn't have felt like such a rapturous revelation, but Uma and Harry were both so strong and interesting and beautiful Oh no, this was a problem wasn't it. Was she pining for two pirates? Three, if one counted the pair of brown eyes wearing her down two feet away. Oh, spindles, this _was_ a problem. Not that she was new to pining, but entering their friend group was weird enough without added complexity. And what if they noticed?! "Um, sure. Sure, I'll...I see no reason why not." Many reasons. All the reasons!

Gil smiled, in a friendly but casual way that made Audrey feel silly for overthinking everything. "Great. Are you gonna give me your roll again?"

She chuckled, relaxing into it. "Obvs; I'm only eating carbs with _breakfast_ , this week."

"What about next week?"

"Next week, it'll be nutritious shakes with every meal and smaller portion sizes. Unless this carb thing sticks, but I doubt it; I'm having a horrible time of it." They both left the lunch line and went to the line for the drink dispenser.

"Why are you doing it, then?"

She winced. She had never had to explain this before, because with the exception of deliberate rebels like Lonnie, no one really talked about the extremely stodgy gender roles in kingdoms like hers and Chad's. "Well, nobles and paparazzi always ask me how I stay in shape and stay healthy and I kind of have to have an answer for them now that I'm pretty much marriage age and the whole Ben thing didn't work out, so I want to try out different health concepts, and whichever I find I can live with will become something I do regularly. I feel like it takes about a week to really get used to something, so that's how long the trial period is."

Gil seemed to understand. "Kind of like my dad; he ate five dozen eggs every day, even though they were hard to get and he didn't even really like them. But he said they made him really strong. I like eggs. They were my favorite food, on the Isle, but here everything is really, really good. I don't know what my favorite food is here."

"Have you had cinnamon rolls yet?"

"I don't know; I'm still learning the names of things."

"It's a sort of swirly bun thing. Really yummy; they've been my breakfast carbs for the past few days. They're really getting me through the week. I'll buy you one when we go shopping."

Gil looked interested, but pointed out, "Uma will want to pay for it."

Right. Of course. Obviously. Uma didn't take favors lightly, on her own behalf or on Harry's and Gil's. It was another "Isle thing". Audrey didn't really know what to say to that, but with Gil you didn't necessarily have to say anything, so she didn't. She put a lid on her drink and a straw through the lid and followed Gil to the table for the pirates' inner circle.

"Princess," Harry greeted her, smirking, from his seat to Uma's right.

"Pirate," Audrey replied brightly, then added to Uma, "Captain," because she had noticed that they liked it when she acknowledged Uma's rank.

"Hey, Dree," Uma said.

"Dree!" a few of the pirates echoed.

Gil went to sit at Uma's left side, as he always did. Audrey sat on the other side of the table, facing them and slightly off to the side.

"What's the gossip today?"

Elated at the invitation, Audrey launched into it. Uma listened, occasionally interjecting to ask for clarification on who was who or what was what. Harry looked amused the whole time, both at how quickly Audrey was speaking and at how easily Uma kept up. And Gil did not seem to be paying them any attention, instead just wolfing down his lunch, except when a particular name or word caught his interest. The rest of the crew merely kept to their side conversations.

"Let's see, what else?" Audrey mused once she ran out of hearsay to regurgitate. "Oh! Are we still on for shopping next Wednesday?"

This earned her the attention of the other pirates back. They regarded her with unveiled, if unvocalized, excitement. Desiree even clapped her hands quietly.

"Harry won't shut up about it, so I think so," Uma chuckled.

On cue, Harry avidly said, "We were outdressing the prissy Bore-adon elites- present company excluded, m'lady -in the scraps that came in the effing ships. Imagine how we'll eviscerate them with good raw materials and concentrated effort." Audrey felt a tickle in her stomach both at being called 'm'lady' and at the relish with which Harry said 'eviscerate'. She steadfastly ignored the feeling:

"I can't wait to show you all the best stores; you will slay like the fae."

"I hope to the gods not; did you see what Purple's wearing today?"

Audrey squeaked, but then kept in her laughter. "I have; it's pretty unfortunate." (Uma smiled at her choice of words.)

"It's a bloody lampshade is what it is," Harry said, his eyes comically wide.

Now she practically fell out, reduced to guilty giggles. Harry, likewise, ended up giggling into Uma's shoulder, and the latter rolled her eyes but smiled indulgently. It wasn't until they were nearly done laughing that Uma added, "Those threads don't need Evie's magic touch; they need Doc's friggin pickaxe. Heigh, ho," which broke them all over again; Audrey barely kept herself from actually snorting, and she laughed for longer than the joke even merited because Harry's over-the-top laugh kept pulling her back into it.

To top Uma (so to speak), Audrey said, "It's not her fault, guys; the dress was designed to match her bangs."

Now Uma cracked a huge smile and chuckled a little, a downright wicked glee in her eyes as she presumably recalled the horrendous bangs in question. Audrey had only seen the tail end of Mal's bang phase in person, having been on vacation for most of it, and at the time it had mostly just stung her pride that someone so clearly not pulling off their own look was being lauded as some kind of icon. It was nice to be able to laugh about it now. Well, actually it was distinctly _not_ nice. But it was fun.

"But seriously, shopping will be a blast," Audrey, still a little short of breath, neatly brought them back on topic.

"I just want to see a mall," Gil said. "And get a cimanon roll."

"Cinnamon," Audrey corrected, "and you won't be disappointed."

"You haven't disappointed us yet," Uma said casually, and Audrey made eye contact with her, and boy, was eye contact supposed to make her heart beat faster? Because Uma's eyes were such a dark brown, almost black, like the very end of a sunset or how the world looked when you buried your face in a hug, and there was such a brilliance to them that Audrey felt seen and understood. Her face felt hot.

A problem. This was a definite problem. And Uma totally knew, because she was definitely holding back a smile, and Harry wasn't even holding back; he was grinning it up over there.

Audrey dropped her gaze under the guise of cutting up her food. "Hey, you know what would be a fun thing to do after shopping?"

"What?" Uma asked.

"We could stop by the dentist's office. They have, like, a ton of free stuff. You can get toothbrushes, toothpaste, candy..."

"Ben put you up to this, didn't he?"

"Yes. But you _should_ see a dentist, so your teeth don't fall out or go bad."

"Dree, I like my doctors like I like my fish: unarmed and not touching my mouth."

Audrey snorted loudly, then clapped a hand to her mouth, horrified. A few people at neighboring tables had glanced over. Well, she was finished. This was a disaster. All the work that had gone into refining her laugh, thoroughly bested by a joke that wasn't even that funny. "It would set a good example if you at least went for a cleaning. Ben said Jay had, like, six cavities when they finally took him."

"So Beastling's a bit of a gossip himself," Harry noted.

"Bet he didn't casually drop how many cavities his girlfriends had," Uma said.

"You don't want little kids' teeth to fall out just because you're scared of going to the dentist, do you?" Her phone vibrated, and Audrey looked down to check it. A text from Ben:

 **Ben: _I haven't heard you snort-laugh since we were kids._** And then a smiley emoji.

Audrey fought the urge to drop her face in her hands. So it had been _that_ loud. She looked up from her phone...

...to find Uma, Harry, and Gil all staring at her. And the whole table of pirates silent.

"What?" she asked, uncomfortably.

Uma made some gesture for the other pirates, and they resumed their side-conversations, in a halfhearted way that led Audrey to suspect they were still listening. Still, she was glad that Uma had waved away the silence; it had been kind of intimidating. Now there was just Harry, whose expression looked uncharacteristically serious, and Gil, who was now watching Uma (and whose hand was still in his food), and Uma, who cleared her throat and slowly said, "I get that things are different in Auradon, but I don't really let people call me a coward."

Ohhhhhh spindles, she _had_ done that hadn't she. Gee, it wasn't like she had trained in how to talk to people in positions of power or anything. "I didn't mean...Sorry."

"'Course ya didn't mean it," Harry said, which surprised Audrey because Harry was normally the _first_ to flip his lid when someone offered an insult of any kind or size to Uma. Then again, the slight warning look in his eyes appeared to be his way of conveying to Audrey that she was only being given a bit of leeway on this rule, not complete exemption.

"You were just talking," Uma said, also coming across as more understanding than usual, "but we try to be keep that kind of ribbing private, not public."

"It's only private if it's just the three of us," Gil added, as if reciting from memory. "Took me a while to learn that."

"Noted," Audrey assured. "Sorry. I guess I forgot that you have a status to protect, too."

"Yeah, and you were too busy trying to trick me into going to the dentist," Uma said, her smirk returning. "You ain't slick."

Audrey smiled, and perhaps her smile was too big because she was relieved. Her first real faux pas, and she had survived it.

"Captain," Desiree suddenly interjected, "can I ask Audrey for help on my Remedial Goodness essay?"

Uma gestured for her to go ahead, and Audrey took a second to process the question and why it had to be asked at all. Then Desiree was handing her a slightly-crumbled sheet of loose leaf paper with messy words penciled carefully into the lines. "Can you look over it before I turn it in?"

"Uh, sure," Audrey said. "I didn't even know she gave essays in that class."

"She doesn't," Uma said. "Desi got assigned one page on why distributing test answers isn't just sharing."

"I'm doing _great_ in Remedial Goodness," Gil said, and it was the first time Audrey had heard him brag about something that wasn't his muscles. 

Uma flashed him an affectionate look. "Yeah, you are."

Audrey wanted to ask how Uma was doing in the class, but she restrained herself. Clearly her curiosity showed on her face, though, because Uma shortly volunteered:

"I'm passing, but I'm not acing it. Fairy Godmother says I ask too many questions. They _are_ starting a Moral Relativism class because of me, though."

Of course they were. And boy was Audrey going to sign up for _that_ , next semester.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will either be another rehearsal or them finally reacting to Sweeney Todd; if you have a preference, let me know in the comments!


End file.
